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NATURE 


AND 


THE SUPERNATURAL 


NEW REVISED EDITION 
OF DR. BUSHNELL’S WORKS 


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—_ 


NATURE AND THE 
SUPERNATURAL 


AS TOGETHER CONSTITUTING 
THE ONE SYSTEM OF GOD 


| BY 


HORACE BUSHNELL 


Centenary Edition 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
I9IO 


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EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE EDITION 
OF 1903 


In 1902, one hundred years from the birth of Dr. Bush- 
nell, an anniversary observed in New England and New 
York by many interesting commemorative services, it has 
seemed good to the publishers and the family of Dr. Bush- 
nell to mark the year by revisions and new editions of 
some of his books, and by the collection and publication 
of material of value remaining unpublished at the time 
of his death. This has accordingly been done in the fol- 
lowing particulars: “Nature and the Supernatural,” “ Ser- 
mons for the New Life,” and “ Work and Play” have been 
given new plates, and the volume of Sermons especially 
has undergone a thorough revision. The material hitherto 
unpublished appears in the new volume, “The Spirit in 
- Man,” which contains Dr. Bushnell’s outline and beginning 
of a work on Inspiration, left unfinished at his death, 
some sermons and selections from sermons, and a few 
other miscellaneous articles and letters. A collection of 
aphorisms selected from Dr. Bushnell’s published books 
will be found to have interest and value of a peculiar kind. 
A Bibliography, including a full list of his own published 
writings and of controversial writings relating to him in the 
period of storm and stress, as well as a list of selected refer- 
ences to him in books and periodicals, completes the book. 


247693 


EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1908 


The “Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell,” by Mary 
Bushnell Cheney, which has been for some time out of 
print, will henceforth be published by Messrs. Charles 
Seribner’s Sons, uniform in style of Be with the set 


of Dr. Bushnell’s works. 
EDITOR. 


SEPTEMBER, 1902. 


AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE 
FIRST EDITION 


Tue treatise here presented to the public was written, as 
regards the matter of it, some years ago. It has been 
ready for the press more than two years, and has been kept 
back by the limitations I am under, which have forbidden 
my assuming the small additional care of its publication. 
It need hardly be said that the subject has been carefully 
studied, as any subject rightfully should be, that raises for 
discussion the great question of the age. 

Scientifically measured, the argument of the treatise is 
rather an hypothesis for the matters in question than a 
positive theory of them. And yet, like every hypothesis 
that gathers in, accommodates, and assimilates all the 
facts of the subject, it gives in that one test the most 
satisfactory and convincing evidence of its practical truth. 
Any view which takes in easily all the facts of a subject 
must be substantially true. Even the highest and most 
difficult questions of science are determined in this manner. 
While it is easy therefore to raise an attack at this or that 
particular point, call it an assumption, or a mere caprice 
of invention, or a paradox, or a dialectically demonstrable 
error, there will yet remain after all such particular de- 
nials the fact that here is a wide hypothesis of the world, 
and the great problem of life and sin and supernatural 
redemption and Christ and a Christly Providence and a 
divinely certified history, and of superhuman gifts entered 


247693 


PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 


into the world, and finally of God as related to all, which 
liquidates these stupendous facts in issue between Chris- 
tians and unbelievers, and gives a rational account of them. 
And so the points that were assaulted and perhaps seemed 
to be carried by the skirmishes of detail, will be seen, by 
one who grasps the whole in which they are comprehended, 
to be still not carried, but to have their reason certified by 
the more general solution of which they are a part. One 
who flies at mere points of detail, regardless of the whole 
to which they belong, can do nothing with a subject like 
this. The points themselves are intelligible only in a way 
of comprehension, or as being seen in the whole to which 
they are subordinate. 

It will be observed that the words of scripture are often 
cited, and its doctrines referred to, in the argument. But 
this is never done as producing a divine authority on the 
subject in question. It is very obvious that an argument 
which undertakes to settle the truth of scripture history 
should not draw on that history for its proofs. The cita- 
tions in question are sometimes designed to correct mis- 
takes which are held by believers themselves, and are a 
great impediment to the easy solution of scripture diffi- 
culties; sometimes they are offered as furnishing concep- 
tions of subjects, that are difficult to be raised in any other 
manner; sometimes they are presented because they are 

-clear enough in their superiority to stand by their own 
self-evidence and contribute their aid, in that manner, to 
the general progress of the argument. 

I regret the accidental loss of a few references that could 
not be recovered without too much labor. 

H. B. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY — QUESTION STATED 


Mankind naturally predisposed to believe in supernatural facts, 1. 
Neologists spring up, whom the Greeks called Sophists, 2. The 
Romans had their Sophists also, 83. And now the turn of Chris- | 
tianity is come, 4. The naturalism of our day reduces Christianity — 
to a myth, in the same way, 5. This issue is precipitated by 
modern science, 7. With tokens, on all sides, adverse to Chris- 
tianity, 9. First, we have the atheistic school of Mr. Hume, 10. 
Next, Pantheism, 11. Next, the Physicalists, represented by 
Phrenology, 1 11. The naturalistic characters of Unitarianism, 12. 
The Associationists, 12. The Magnetic necromancy, 13. ‘The 
classes mostly occupied with the material laws and forces, 13. 
Modern politics, 14. The popular literature, 15. Evangelical 
teachers fall into naturalism, without being aware of it, 17. But 
we undertake no issue with science, 18. Our object is to finda 
legitimate place for the supernatural, as included in the system of 
God, 18. And this, with an ultimate reference to the authentica- 
tion of the gospel history, 20. 


CHAPTER II 
DEFINITIONS — NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL 


a Nature defined, 24. The supernatural defined, 25. Do not design to 
limit, or deny the propriety y of other uses, 26. Definition makes 
us supernatural beings ourselves, 30. Our supernatural action 
illustrated, 31. We operate supernaturally, by making new con- 
junctions of causes, 33. Not acted on ourselves, by causes that 
are efficient through us, 34. Not scale-beams, in our will, as gov- 
erned necessarily by the strongest motive, 35. In wrong, we 
consciously follow the weakest motive, 37. The other functions 
of the soul, exterior to the will, area nature, 39. Atlantic Monthly 
on executive limitations of power, 41. And yet we are conscious, 
none the less, of liberty, 43. Self-determination indestructible, 44 

ix 


CONTENTS 


Hence the honor we put on heroes and martyrs, 45. If we act 
supernaturally, why not also God ? 47. Not enough that God acts 
in the causes of nature, 48. 


CHAPTER III 


NATURE 18 NOT THE SYSTEM OF GOD— THINGS AND POWERS, 
HOW RELATED . 


Nature oppresses our mind, at first, by her magnitudes, 62. Men, 
' after all, demand something supernatural, 54. Hence the appetite 


we discover for the demonstrations of necromancy, 55. Shelley, 
the atheist, makes a mythology, 55. The defect of our new litera- 
ture, that it has and yields no inspiration, 56. The agreement of 
so many modes of naturalism, signifies nothing, because they have 
no agreement among themselves, 58. Familiarized to the subordi- 
nation of causes in nature, that we may not be disturbed by the 
same fact in religion, 60. Strauss takes note of this fact when 
denying the possibility of miracles, 62. Geology shows that God 
thus subordinates nature, on a large scale, 64. In the creation of 
so many new races, in place of the extinct races, 65. He created 
their germs, 66. But man must have been created in maturity, 67. 
The development theory inverts all the laws of organic and inor- 
ganic substance, 69. The aspect of nature indicates interruptive 
and clashing forces, that are not in the merely mineral causes, 71. 
Distinction of Things and Powers, 72. Both fully contrasted, 73. 
Nature not the universe, 74. A subordinate part or member of 
the great universal system, 75. The principal interest and signifi- 
cance of the universe is in the powers, 77. 


CHAPTER IV 


PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE, AS RELATED TO THE FACT OF SIN 


The world of nature, a tool-house for the practice and moral training 


7 


of powers, 79. Their training, a training of consent, which sup- 
poses a power of non-consent, #.e. sin, 80." Possibility of evil 
necessarily involved, 81. No limitation of omnipotence, 82. Why, 
then, does God create with such a possibility ? 88. May be God’s 
plan to establish in holiness, in despite of wrong, 84. No breach 
of unity involved in his plan, 86. The real problem of existence 
is character, or the perfection of liberty, 87. Which require a 
trial in society, 88. And this an embodiment in matter, 89. Will 
the powers break loose from God, as they may ? 91. God desires 
no such result, 92. When it comes, no surprise upon his plan, or 
annihilation of it, 98. Illustrated by the founding of a school, 98. 
No causes of sin, only conditions privative, 95. What is meant by 


CONTENTS xi 


the term, 97. First condition privative — defect of knowledge, 98. 
Have all categorical, but no experimental knowledge, 99. The 
subject guilty, as having the former, without the latter, 102. Sec- 
ond condition privative — unacquainted with law, and therefore 
unqualified for liberty, 105. A kind of prior necessity, therefore, 
that he be passed through a twofold economy, 107. Discover this 
twofold economy in other matters, 108. A third condition priva- 
tive, as regards social exposure to the irruptions of bad powers, 111. 
This fact admitted by the necromancers, 113. Sin then can not 
be accounted for, 116. No validity in the objection, that God has 
been able to educate angels without sin, 117. Proof-text in Jude 
explained by Faber, 118. No objection lies, that sin is made a 
necessary means of good, 120. The existence of Satan explained, - 
or conceived, 121. The supremacy of God not diminished, but 
increased, by an eternal purpose to reduce the bad possibility, 125. 


CHAPTER V 
THE FACT OF SIN 


- All naturalism begins with some professed, or tacitly assumed, denial 
of the fact of sin, 129. On this point, Mr. Parker is ambiguous, 130. 
Fourier charges all evil against society, 132, Dr. Strauss, all 
against the individual, and none against society, 133. The popular, 
Pantheistic literature denies the fact of sin, 1385. Appeal to obser- 
vation for evidence, 136.s We blame ourselves, as wrong-doers, 138. 
Our demonstrations show us to be exercised by the consciousness 
of sin, 141. We act on the supposition that sin is ever to be 
expected, dreaded, provided against, 148. Forgiveness supposes 
the fact, 146. So the pleasure we take in satire, 147. So the 
feeling of sublimity in the tragic sentiment, 148. Solutions offered 


rection,” but it is self-misdirection, therefore sin, 150. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN 


to it with groans, 157. Thus it is with all the four great depart- 
ments of life, and first, with the soul, or with souls, 159. No 
law or function is discontinued, but all its functions are become 


q 


se. 


xl CONTENTS 


irregular and discordant, 160. Similar effects in the body, or in 
bodies, 161. Hence disease, and, to some extent, certainly, mor- 
tality itself, 163. Society is disordered_by inheritance, through 
the principle of organic unity involved in propagation, 164. Ob- 
jection considered, that God, in this way, does not give us a fair 
opportunity, 165. Two modes of production possible; by propa- 
gation, and by the direct creation of each man, 166. The mode 
Y by propagation, with all its disadvantages of hereditary corruption, 
shown to be greatly preferable, 166. And yet, in this manner, 
society becomes organically disordered, 170. Similar effects of 
mischief in the material world, 173. Not true that nature, as we 
know it, represents the beauty of God, 174. Swedenborg holds 
that God creates through man, 175. And somehow it is clear that 
the creation becomes a type of man, as truly as of God, 176. 
Battle of the ants, 178. Deformities generally, consequences of 
sin, 178. Not true that they are introduced to make contrasts for 
beauty, 180. 


CHAPTER VII 
ANTICIPATIVE CONSEQUENCES 


We find disorder, prey, deformity, in the world, before man’s arrival 
— what account shall be made of such a fact? 181. There are 
two modes of consequences, the subsequent, which are physical 
effects, and the anticipative, which respect the same facts before 
the time, 183. Propose now the question of the anticipative con- 

y sequences, 185. Evil beings in the world, before the arrival of 
man ; how far disorders in it may be due to the effect of their 
sin, 186. Anticipative consequences just as truly consequences, 
as those which come after, 187. Intelligence must give tokens 
beforehand of what it perceives, 188. Agassiz and Dana— pre- 
meditations and prophetic types, 189. Such anticipative tokens 
necessary, to show that God understands his empire beforehand, 192. 
The more impressive, that they are fresh creations, to a great 
extent, as shown by Mr. Agassiz, 194. Misshapen forms shown 
by Hugh Miller to increase, as the era of man approaches —as-in 
the serpent race and many kinds of fishes, 195. God will moderate 
the pride of science, thus, by the facts of science, 197. The world 
as truly a conatus, as an existing fact, 198. The Pantheistic 
naturalism gives a different account of these deformities, 198. 
Which account neither meets our want, nor even explains the 


facts, 199. Sin is seen to be a ye a very great fact, as it must be, if it 


is anything, 201. Objection considered, that there was never, in 
this view, any real kosmos at all, 202. Unnature is the grand 
result of sin, 203. The bad miracle has ormed the world, 205. 


CONTENTS xili 


CHAPTER VIII 
NO REMEDY IN DEVELOPMENT, OR SELF-REFORMATION ‘ 


Two rival gospels, 208. The first, which is development, or the prog- 
ress of the race, will not restore the fall of sin, 208. No race 
begins at the savage state, and in that state there is no root of 
progress, 210. All the advanced races appear, more or less dis- 
tinctly, to have had visitations of supernatural influence, 212. If 
there is a law of progress, why are so many races degraded or 
extirpated ? 213. The first stage of man is a crude state, and 
the advanced and savage races are equally distant from it, 214. 
Geology shows that God does not mend all disasters by develop- 
ment, 214. Healing is not development, 216. Generally asso- vod 
ciated with supernatural power, of which it is the type, 217. No 
one dares, in fact, to practically trust the development principle, 
whether in the state or in the family, 219. The second rival gos- 
pel proposes self-reformation or self-culture, with as little ground 
of hope, 221. No will-practice, or ethical observance, can mend 
the disorder of souls, 222. These can not restore harmony, 223. 
Nor liberty, 228. The only sufficient help, or reliance, i is God, 224. 
225. Even Plato denies the possibility of virtue, by any mere 
human force, 228. 228. Seneca, Ovid, Xenophanes, to the same effect, 
231. Plato, Strabo, Pliny, all indicate a want of some super- 
natural light, or revelation, 232. The conversion of Clement 
shows the fact in practical exhibition, 235. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE SUPERNATURAL COMPATIBLE WITH NATURE AND SUBJECT 
TO. ‘FIXED LAWS 


The world is a thing, into which all the powers may rightfully act 
_ themselves, 237. Children at the _play of ball, a good image of 
this higher truth, 239. Not. the true doctrine of a supernatural 
agency, that God acts through nature, 241. Did not so act in pro- 
ducing the new races of geology, 241. Office of nature, as being 
designed to mediate the effects implied in duties and wrongs, 242. 
Nature the constant, and the supernatural, the variable agency, 244. 
vi God really governs the world, and by a supernatural method, 245. 
Without this he has no liberty in nature, more than if it were a 
tomb, 246. Manifestly we want a God living and acting now, 247. 
And yet all this action of God, supposes no contravention of 


xiv CONTENTS 


laws, 248. Reasons why this is inadmissible, 248. Several kinds 
of law, but all agree in supposing the character of uniformity, 249. 
Thus we have natural law and moral law, but God’s supernatural 
action not determined by these, is submitted always to the law of 
his end, 251. His end being always the same, he will be as exactly 

submitted to it as nature to her laws, 253. No returning here into — 
the same circle as in nature, but a perpetually onward motion, 253. 
What occurs but once here, is done by a fixed law, 256. Many of 
the laws of the Spirit we know, 257. The idea of superiority in 
nature, as being uniformly corrected, 258. Also, the impression 
of a superior magnitude in nature, 260. 


CHAPTER X , 


THE CHARACTER OF JESUS FORBIDS HIS POSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION 
uy WITH MEN 


The superhuman personality of Christ is fully attested by his char- 
acter, 264. And the description verifies itself, 264. Represented 
as beginning with a perfect childhood, 265, Which childhood 
is described naturally, and without exaggerations of fancy, 267. 
Represented always as an innocent being, yet with no loss of 
force, 270. His piety is unrepentant, yet successfully main- 
tained, 272. He united characters which men are never able to 
unite perfectly, 273. His amazing pretensions are sustained so as 
never even to shock the skeptic, 275. Excels as truly in the 
passive virtues, 279. Bears the common trials, in a faultless man- 
ner of patience, 280. His passion, as regards the time, and the 
intensity, is not human, 281. His undertaking to organize, on 
earth, a kingdom of God, is superhuman, 285. His plan is uni- 
versal in time, 286. He takes rank with the poor, and begins with 
them for his material, 288. Becoming the head thus of a class, he 
never awakens a partisan feeling, 291. His teachings are perfectly 
original and independent, 298. He teaches by no human or philo- 
sophic methods, 294. He never veers to catch the assent of mul- 
titudes, 295. He is comprehensive, in the widest sense, 296. He 
is perfectly clear of superstition in a superstitious age, 297. He 
is no liberal, yet shows a perfect charity, 298. The simplicity 
of his teaching is perfect, 301. His morality is not artificial or 
artistic, 302. He is never anxious for his success, 304. He im- 
presses his superiority and his real greatness the more deeply, the 
more familiarly he is known, 305. Did any such character exist, 
or is it a myth, or a human invention? 309. Is the character sin- 
less? 310. Mr. Parker and Mr. Hennel think him imperfect, 312. 
Answer of of Milton ‘to one of their accusations, 315. How great a 
matter that one such character has lived in our world, 317. 


CONTENTS xv 


CHAPTER XI 
CHRIST PERFORMED MIRACLES 


Miracles do not prove the gospel, but the problem itself is to prove the 
“miracles, 819. General assumption of the skeptics, that miracles 
are incredible— Spinoza, Hume, Strauss, Parker, 320. Miracles “ 
defined, 321. What miracle is not, 323. Some concessions noted 
of the deniers of miracles— Hennel, 325. Also of Dr. Strauss, 326. 
His solution of the immediate and the mediate action of God, 327. 
Proofs — that the supernatural action of man involves all the diffi- 
culties, 331. That sin is near in appearance to a miracle, 332. 
That nature, assumed to be perfect and not to be interrupted by 
God, is in fact become unnature already, 334. _ That without some- 
thing equivalent, the restoration of man is impossible, 334. That 
nature was never designed to be the complete empire of God, 335. 
That if God has ever “done any thing he may as well do a miracle 
now, 386. Then he is shown, even by science, to have performed ~ 
miracles, 336. But the great proof is Jesus himself, having power 
without suspending any law of nature, 337. On an errand high 
enough to justify miracles, 339. It is also significant that the 
deniers can make no account of the history, which is at all rational 
— Strauss, 341. Mr. Parker concedes the fact that Christ himself —- 
is a miracle, 343. Objection—why not also maintain the eccle- ~ 
siastical miracles ? 344. That according to our definition there 
may be false miracles, 345. That if they are credible in a former 
age, they also should be now, 346. That miracles are demonstra- 
tions of force, 348. But we rest in Jesus the chief miracle, 351. ~ 


CHAPTER XII 
WATER-MARKS IN THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 


The most convincing evidence, that which is already on hand, asin 
water-mark, undiscovered, 352. Principal evidence of the kind, 
the two economies, letter and spirit, as being inherently neces- 
sary, "853. Overlooked b by our philosophers, 354. More ‘nearly 
discerned by the heathen, 355. Once thought of as necessary, the 
necessity is seen, 357. Scriptures anticipate all human wisdom 
here, 358. And, in this precedence, we discover that they are not 
of man, 360. Another strong proof in the gospels, not commonly 
observed, that the supernatural fact of the incarnation is so per- 
fectly and systematically carried out, 361. There is no such con- 
cinnity of facts in any of the mythological supernaturalisms, 361. 
It appears in a multitude of points, as in the name, gospel, 362. 
In the name, salvation, 363. In salvation by faith, 8364. In justi- & 


Xvi CONTENTS 


fication by faith, 366. In the setting up of a kingdom of God on 
earth, 369. In the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and his works, as 
related to Christ and his, 370. In the doctrine of spiritual regen- 
eration, 373. In the sacred mystery of the Trinity, 375, Hens 
Napoleon, Hennel, and others, express their admiration of the 
compactness and firm order of Christianity, 380. Whence came 
this close, internal adaptation of parts in a matter essentially 
miraculous ? 382. Only rational supposition, that the fabric is all 
of God, as it pretends to be, 383. May see in Mormonism, Mo- 
hammedanism and Romanism, what man can do in compounding 
supernaturals, 385. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE WORLD IS GOVERNED SUPERNATURALLY, IN THE INTEREST 
OF CHRISTIANITY 


There is but one God, who, governing the world, must do it coinci- 
dently with what he is doing in Christ, 389. And this Christ him- 
self boldly affirms, 390. Two kinds of Providence, the natural 
and supernatural — nature the fixed term between us and God, 391. 

, And then there is a variable mode, in which we come into recip- 
rocal relation with God—this is the supernatural, 392. And in 
this field, God rules for Christianity’s sake, 393. The evidences 
are, first, that things do not take place as they should, if the effects 
of sin were left to the endless propagation of causes, 395. Hence 
then, while the great teachers of the world and their schools dis- 
appear, Christianity remains, 396. Itself an institution, in the 
very current of the flood, 398. A second evidence, that the events 
of the world show a divine hand, even that of Christ, bearing 
rule, 399. The Jewish dispersion, the Greek philosophy already 
waning, the Greek tongue every where, the Roman Empire uni- 
versal, a state of general peace, and so the way of Christ is made 
ready, 400. So with the events that followed, 402. But what of 
the dark ages, and other adverse facts? 405. Enough that this 
mystery of iniquity must work, till the gospel is proved out, 406. 
Some events confessedly dark, and yet they might be turned to 
wear a look of advantage, if only we could fathom their import, 409. 

y A third evidence, in the spiritual changes wrought in men — diffi- 
cult to change a character, 412. The cases of Paul, Augustine, 
and others, 415. The changes are facts; if Christianity did not 
work them, a supernatural Providence did, for Christianity’s sake, 
418. Not changed by their own ideas, 419. Not by theologie pre- 
conceptions — case of a short-witted person — Brainard’s conjurer, 
&c., 421. More satisfactory to conceive these results to be wrought 

+7 by the Holy Spirit, which comes to really the same thing, 424. 


CONTENTS XVil 


How the critics venture, with great defect of modesty, to show 
the subjects of such changes, that they misconceive their expe- 
rience, 426. 


CHAPTER XIV 
MIRACLES AND SPIRITUAL GIFTS ARE NOT DISCONTINUED 


If miracles are inherently incredible, nothing is gained by thrusting 
them back and cutting them short in time, 431. The closing up of 
the canon, no reason of discontinuance, 432. Certainly not dis- 
continued, for this reason, in the days ef Chrysostom, 432. There 
have been suspensions, here and there, but no discontinuance, 433. 
Does not follow that they will occur, in later times, in the exact 
way of the former times, 434. The reason of miracles, in that 
oscillation toward extremes, which belongs to the state of sin, 436. 
First, we swing toward reason, order, uniformity ; next, toward 
fanaticism, 437. Hence almost every appearance of supernatural 
gifts, that we can trace, has come to its end in some kind of 
excess, 489. Why it is that lying wonders are generally contem- 
poraneous, 440. The first thing impressed by investigation here, 
that miracles could not have ceased at any given date — no such 
date can be found, which they do not pass over, 444. Newman 
and the ecclesiastical miracles, 444. Miracles of ‘*The Scots 
Worthies,’’ 445. Les Trembleurs des Cevennes, or French proph- 
ets, 446. Les Convulsionnaires de Saint Médard, 446. George 
Fox’s miracles, and those of the Friends, 447. Abundance of 
such facts in our own time, as in premonitions, answers to prayer, 
healings, tongues, of the MacDonalds and the followers of Irv- 
ing, 449. Case of Miss Fancourt, 451. Not true that the verdict 
of the thinking men of our day is to decide such a question, 452. 
The thinking men can make nothing of Joan of Arc, of Cromwell, 
and many other well-attested characters, 456. But why do we 
only hear of such at a distance ?— why not meet the persons, see 
the facts ? 457. We do— Captain Yonnt’s dream, 458. The test- 
ing of prayer by a physician, 460. Appear to have had the tongues 
in H——, and other gifts, 461. Case of healing by an English 
disciple, 462. Case of a diseased cripple made whole, 466. The 
visit of a prophet, 469. Obliged to admit that, while such gifts 
are wholly credible, they are not so easily believed by one whose 
mind is preoccupied by a contrary habit of expectation, 474. 


CHAPTER XV 
CONCLUSION STATED -— USES AND RESULTS 


Argument recapitulated, 476. It does not settle, or at all move the 
question of inspiration, but sets the mind in a position to believe 


Xviii CONTENTS 


inspiration easily, 478. The mythical hypothesis virtually re- 
moved, without any direct answer, 479. Have not proved all the 
miracles, but miracles —let every one discuss the particular « ques- 
tions for himself, 480. Objection that every thing is thus sur- 
rendered, 481. Relation of the argument to Mr. Parker’s, 482. 
Particularly to his view of natural inspiration, 484. The argu- 
ment, if carried, will also affect the estimate held of natural the- 
ology, or modify the place given it, 488. And preserve the positive 
institutions by showing a rational basis for their authority, 492. 
And correct that false ambition of philanthropy, which dispenses 
with Christianity as the regenerative institution of God, 495. And 
restore the true apostolic idea of preaching, 497. And require 
intellectual and moral philosophy to raise the great problem of 
existence, and recognize the fact of sin and su rnatural redemp- 
tion, 499. And, last Sf all Wall Give to faith oo Christian experi- 
ence that solid basis on which they may be expected to unfold 
greater results, 502. 


NATURE 


THE SUPERNATURAL 








CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY. — QUESTION STATED 


In the remoter and more primitive ages of the world, 
sometimes called mythologic, it will be observed that 
mankind, whether by reason of some native instinct as 
yet uncorrupted, or some native weakness yet uneradi- 
cated, are abundantly disposed to believe in things super- 
natural. Thus it was in the extinct religions of Egypt, 
Pheenicia, Greece, and Rome; and thus alsoit still is in 
the existing mythologic religions of the East. Under 
this apparently primitive habit of mind, we find men 
readiest, in fact, to believe in that which exceeds the 
terms of mere nature; in deities and apparitions of 
deities, that fill the heavens and earth with their sub- 
lime turmoil ; in fates and furies ; in nymphs and graces; 
in signs, and oracles, and incantations; in “gorgons and 


chimeras dire.” Their gods are charioteering in the sun, ~ 


presiding in the mountain tops, rising out of the foam 
of the sea, breathing inspirations in the gas that issues 
from caves and rocky fissures, loosing their rage in the 
storms, plotting against each other in the intrigues of 
courts, mixing in battles to give success to their own 
people or defeat the people of some rival deity. All 
departments and regions of the world are full of their 
miraculous activity. Above ground, they are managing 
the thunders ; distilling in showers, or settling in dews; 
1 


= 


2 THE GREEK SOPHISTS 


ripening or blasting the harvests; breathing health, or 
poisoning the air with pestilential infections. In the 
ground they stir up volcanic fires, and wrestle in earth- 
quakes that shake down cities. In the deep world under- 
ground, they receive the ghosts of departed men, and 
preside in Tartarean majesty over the realms of the 
shades. The unity of reason was nothing to these Gen- 
tiles. They had little thought of nature as an existing 
scheme of order and law. Every thing was supernatural. 
The universe itself, in all its parts, was only a vast theater 
in which the gods and demigods were acting their parts. 
But there sprung up, at length, among the Greeks, 
some four or five centuries before the time of Christ, a 
class of speculative neologists and rationalizing critics, 
called Sophists, who began to put these wild myths of 
religion to the test of argument. If we may trust the 
description of Plato, they were generally men without 
much character, either as respects piety or even good 
morals; a conceited race of Illuminati, who more often 
scoffed than argued against the sacred things of their 
religion. Still it was no difficult thing for them to 
shake, most effectually, the confidence of the people in 
schemes of religion so intensely mythical. And it was 
done the more easily that the more moderate and sober 
minded of the Sophists did not propose to overthrow 
and obliterate the popular religion, but only to resolve 
the mythic tales and deities into certain great facts and 
powers of nature; and so, as they pretended, to find a 
more sober and rational ground of support for their 
religious convictions. In this manner we are informed 
that one of their number, Eumerus, a Cyrenian, “re- 
solved the whole doctrine concerning the gods: into a 
history of nature.” * 
1Neander, Vol. L., p. 6. y 


AND THEIR TIMES 3 


The religion of the Romans, at a later period, under- 
went a similar process, and became an idle myth, having 
no earnest significance and as little practical authority 
in the convictions of the people. And, when Christ 
came, the Sadducees were practicing on the Jewish faith 
in much the same way. As philosophy entered, religion 
was falling everywhere before its rationalizing pro- 
cesses. It was poetry on one side and dialectics on the 
other ; and the dialectics were, in this case, more than a 
match for the poetry,—as they ever must be, until their 
real weakness and the cheat of their pretensions are dis- 
covered. What the Christian father, Justin Martyr, 
says of the Sophists of his time, was doubtless a suf- 
ficiently accurate account of the others in times previ- 
ous, and may be taken as a faithful picture of the small 
residuum of religious conviction left by themall. “They 
seek,” he says, “‘to convince us that the divinity extends 
his care to the great whole and to the several kinds, but 
not to me and to you, not to men as individuals. Hence 
it is useless to pray to him; for every thing occurs ac- 
cording to the unchangeable law of an endless cycle.” ! 

Or, we may take the declaration of Pliny, from the 
side of the heathen philosophy itself, though many were 
not ready to go the same length, preferring to retain re- 
ligion, which they oftener called superstition, as a good 
instrument for the state and useful as a restraint upon 
the common people. He says:—‘‘ All religion is the 
offspring of necessity, weakness, and fear. What God 
is, if in truth he be any thing distinct from the world, 
it is beyond the compass of man’s understanding to 
know.” ? 

Thus, between the destructive processes of reason 


1 Neander, Vol. I., p. 9. 2 Neander, Vol. I., p.10. 


4 THE CHRISTIAN SOPHISTS, 


entering on one side to demolish, and Christianity on 
the other to offer itself as a substitute, the old mytho- 
logic religions fell, and were completely swept away. 


And now, at last, the further question comes, viz., 
whether Christianity itself is also, in its turn, to experi- 
ence the same fate, and be exterminated by the same or 
a closely similar process? Is it now to be found that 
Christianity is only another form of myth, and is it so to 
be resolved into the mere “history of nature,” as the 
other religions were before it? Is it now to be dis- 
covered that the prophecy and miracle of the Old Testa- 
ment, and all the formally historic matters even of the 
gospels and epistles of the New, are reducible to mere 
natural occurrences, “ under the unchangeable laws of 
an endless cycle”? Is this process now to end in the 
, discovery, beyond which there can be no other, that 
God himself is, in truth, nothing “distinct from the 
world” ? 

This is the new infidelity: not that rampant, erude- 
minded, and malignant scoffing which, in a former age, 
undertook to rid the world of all religion; on the con- 
trary, it puts on the air and speaks in the character of a 
genuine scholarship and philosophy. It simply under- 
takes, if we can trust its professions, to interpret and 
apply to the facts of scripture the true laws of historic 
criticism. It more generally speaks in the name of re- 
ligion, and does not commonly refuse even the more 
distinctive name of Christianity. Coming thus in shapes 
of professed deference to revealed religion, many persons 
appear to be scarcely aware of the questions it is rais- 
ing, the modes of thought it is generating, and the 
enor progress toward mere naturalism it is beginning 
to set in motion. Many, also, are the more effectually 


~ 


” 
OR NATURALIZING CRITICS 5 


blinded to the tendency of the times, that so many really 
true opinions and so many right sentiments, honorable 
to God and religion, are connected with the pernicious 
and false method by which it is, in one way or another, 
extinguishing the faith of religion in the world. It pro- 
poses to make a science of religion, and what can be 
more plausible than to have religion become a science? 

Tt finds a religious sentiment in all men, which, in 
one view, is a truth. It finds a revelation of God in 
all things, which also is a truth. It discovers a uni- 
versal inspiration of God in human souls; which, if it 
be taken to mean that they are inherently related to 
God, and that God, in the normal state, would be an 
illuminating, all-moving presence in them, is likewise 
a truth. It rejoices also in the discovery of great and 
good men, raised up in all times to be seers and proph- 
ets of God; which, again, is not impossible, if we take 
into account the possibility of a really supernatural 
training or illumination, outside of the Jewish cultus ; 
as in the case of Jethro, Job, and Cornelius, including 
probably Socrates and many others like him, who were 
inwardly taught of God and regenerated by the private 
mission of his Spirit. 

But exactly this the new infidelity can not allow. 
All pretenses of a supernatural revelation, inspiration, 
or experience, it rejects; finding a religion, beside 
which there is no other, within the terms of mere 
nature itself; a universal, philosophic, scientific reli- 
gion. In this it luxuriates, expressing many very 
good and truly sublime sentiments; sentiments of love, 
and brotherhood, and worship; quoting scripture, 
when it is convenient, as it quotes the Orphic hymns, 
or the Homeric and Sibylline verses, and testifying the 
profoundest admiration to Jesus Christ, in common 


6 PRESENT TENDENCIES, 


with Numa, Plato, Zoroaster, Confucius, Mohammed, 
and others; and perhaps allowing that he is, on the 
whole, the highest and most inspired character that has 
ever yet appeared in the world. All this, on the level 
of mere nature, without miracle, or incarnation, or 
resurrection, or new-creation, or any thing above nature. 


‘Such representations are only historic myths, covering 


perhaps real truths, but, as regards the historie form, 
incredible. Nothing supernatural is to be admitted. 
Redemption itself, considered as a plan to raise man up 


_ out of thraldom, under the corrupted action of nature, 


| —rolling back its currents and bursting its constraints, 


—jis a fiction. There is no such thraldom, no such 
deliverance, and so far Christianity is a mistake; a 
mistake, that is, in every thing that constitutes its 
grandeur as a plan of salvation for the world. 

We have heard abundantly of these and such like 
aberrations from the Christian truth in Germany, and 
also in the literary metropolis of our own country. 
But we have not imagined any general tendency, it 
may be, in this direction, as a peculiarity of our times. 
If so, we have a discovery to make; for, though it may 
not be true that any large proportion of the men of 
our times have distinctly and consciously accepted this 
form of unbelief, yet the number of such is rapidly 
increasing, and, what is worse, the number of those 
who are really in it, without knowing it, is greater and 
more rapidly increasing still. The current is this way, 
and the multitudes or masses of the age are falling into 
it. Let us take our survey of the forms of doubt or 


_ denial that are converging on this common center and 


uniting, as a common force, against the faith of any 
thing supernatural, and so against the possibility, in 
fact, of Christianity as a gospel of salvation to the world. 


CREATED BY SCIENCE, 7 


From the first moment or birth-time of modern 
science, if we could fix the moment, it has been clear 
that Christianity must ultimately come into a grand 
issue of life and death with it, or with the tendencies 
embodied in its progress. Not that Christianity has any 
conflict with the facts of science, or they with it. On 
the contrary, since both it and nature have their com- 
mon root and harmony in God, Christianity is the 
natural foster-mother of science, and science the certain 
handmaid of Christianity. And both together, when ° 
rightly conceived, must constitute one complete system 
of knowledge. But the difficulty is here; that we see 
things only in a partial manner, and that the two great 
modes of thought, or intellectual methods, that of 
Christianity in the supernatural department of God’s 
plan, and that of science in the natural, are so different 
that a collision is inevitable and a struggle necessary to 
the final liquidation of the account between them; or, 
what is the same, necessary to a proper settlement of 
the conditions of harmony. 

Thus, from the time of Galileo’s and Newton’s dis- 
coveries, down to the present moment of discovery and 
research in geological science, we have seen the Chris- 
tian teachers stickling for the letter of the Christian 
documents and alarmed for their safety, and fighting, 
inch by inch and with solemn pertinacity, the plainest, 
most indisputable or even demonstrable facts. On the 
other side, the side of science, multitudes, especially of 
the mere dilettanti, have been boasting, almost every 
month, some discovery that was to make a fatal breach 
upon revealed religion. 

And a much greater danger to religion is to be 
apprehended from science than this, viz., the danger 
that comes from what may be called a bondage under . 


8 OR THE METHOD OF SCIENCE 


the method of science, —as if nothing could be true, 
save as it is proved by the scientific method. Whereas, 
the method of all the higher truths of religion is differ- 
ent, being the method of faith; a verification by the 
heart, and not by the notions of the head. 
Busied in nature, and profoundly engrossed with her 
phenomena, confident of the uniformity of her laws, 
charmed with the opening wonders revealed in her pro- 
cesses, armed with manifold powers contributed to the 
advancement of commerce and the arts by the discovery 
of her secrets, and pressing onward still in the inquest, 
with an eagerness stimulated by rivalry and the expec- 
tation of greater wonders yet to be revealed, —occu- 
pied in this manner, not only does the mind of scientific 
men but of the age itself become fastened to, and 
glued down upon, nature; conceiving that nature, as a 
frame of physical order, is itself the system of God; 
unable to imagine any thing higher and more general 
to which it is subordinate. Imprisoned, in thés manner, 
by the terms and the method of nature, the tendency 
is to find the whole system of God included under its 
laws ; and then it is only a part of the same assumption 
gh we are incredulous in regard to any modification, 
or seeming interruption of their activity, from causes 
included in the supernatural agency of persons, or in 
those agencies of God himself that complete the unity 
and true system of his reign. And so it comes to pass 
that, while the physical order called nature is perhaps 
[only a single and very subordinate term of that univer- 
‘sal divine system, a mere pebble chafing in the ocean- 
| bed of its eternity, we refuse to believe that this pebble 
can be acted on at all from without, requiring all events 
and changes in it to take place under the laws of acting 
it has inwardly in itself. There is no incarnation 


THE REVISION PREPARING 9 


therefore, no miracle, no redemptive grace, or experi- 
ence ; for God’s system is nature, and it is incredible 
that the laws of nature should be interrupted; all 
which is certainly true, if there be no higher, more 
inclusive system under which it may take place sys- 
tematically, as a result even of system itself. 

And exactly this must be the understanding of man- 
kind, at some future time, when the account between 
Christianity and nature shall have been fully liquidated. 
When that point is reached, it will be seen that the real 


| system of God includes two parts, a natural and a su- 
pernatural, and it will no more be incredible that one 


should act upon the other, than that one planet or par- 
ticle in the department of nature should act upon and 
modify the action of another. But we are not yet ready 
for a discovery so difficult to be made. Thus far the 
tendency is visible, on every side, to believe in nature 
simply, and in Christianity only so far as it conforms 
to nature and finds shelter under its laws. And the 
mind of the Christian world is becoming, every day, 
more and more saturated with this propensity to natu- 
ralism; gravitating, as it were, by some fixed law, though 
imperceptibly or unconsciously, toward a virtual and real 
unbelief in Christianity itself; for the Christianity that 
is become a part only of nature, or is classified under 
nature, is Christianity extinct. That we may see how 
far the mind of an age is infected by this naturalizing 
tendency, let us note a few of the thousand and one 
forms in which it appears. 

First we have the relics of the old school of denial 
and atheism, headed most conspicuously by Mr. Hume 
and the French philosophers. All atheists are natural- 
ists of necessity. And atheism there will be in the 
world as long as sin is init. If the doctrine dies out as 


) 


10 ATHEISM NATURALISTIC, OF COURSE 


argument, it will remain as a perverse and scoffing spirit. 
Or it will be reproduced in the dress of a new philoso- 
phy. Dying out as a negation of Hobbes or Hume, it 
will reappear in the positive and stolidly physical pre- 
tendership of Comte. But, whatever shape or want of 
shape it takes, destructive or positive, — a doctrine or 
a scoffing, a thought of the head or a distemper of the 
passions, — it will of course regard a supernatural faith 
as the essence of all unreason. 

Still it can not be said that the negations of Mr. 
Hume are gone by, as long as they are assumed and 
practically held as fundamental truths, by many pro- 

 fessed teachers of Christianity ; for it is remarkable that 
‘our most recent and most thorough-going school of nat- 
uralists, or naturalizing critics in the Christian serip- 
‘tures, really place it as the beginning and first principle 
of criticism, that no miracle is credible or possible. 
‘This they take by assumption, as a point to be no 
longer debated, after the famous argument of Hume. 
The works of Strauss, Hennel, Newman, Froude, Fox, 
Parker, all more or less distinguished for their ability, 
as for their virtual annihilation of the gospels, are to- 
gether rested on this basis. They are not all atheists ; 
perhaps none of them will admit that distinction ; some 
of them even claim to be superlatively Christian. But 
the assault upon Christianity, in which they agree, is 
the one from which the greatest harm is now to be ex- 
pected, and that, in great part, for the reason that they 
do not acknowledge the true genealogy of their doc- 
trine, and that, hovering over the gulf that separates 
atheism from Christianity, they take away faith from 
one, without exposing the baldness and forbidding 
sterility of the other. They have many apologies too, 
in the unhappy incumbrances thrown upon the Chris- 


PANTHEISTS AND PHRENOLOGISTS 11 


tian truth by its defenders, which makes the danger 
greater still. 

Next we have the school or schools of pantheists ; 
who identify God and nature, regarding the world it- 
self and its history as a necessary development of God, 
or the consciousness of Goce. Of course there is no power 
out of nature and above it to work a miracle; conse- 
quently no revelation that is more than a development 
of nature. 

Next in order comes the large and vaguely-defined 
body of physicalists, who, without pretending to deny 
Christianity, value themselves on finding all the laws 
of obligation, whether moral or religious, in the laws of 
the body and the world. The phrenologists are a lead- 
ing school in this class, and may be taken as an example 
of the others. Human actions are the results of organi- 
zation. Laws of duty are only laws of penalty or bene- 
fit, inwrought in the physical order of the world; and 
Combe “On the Constitution of Man” is the real gos- 
pel, of which Christianity is only a less philosophic ver- 
sion. ‘Thousands of persons who have no thought of 
rejecting Christianity are sliding continually into this 
scheme, speaking and reasoning every hour about mat- 

__ He. uty, in a way that supposes Christianity to be 

~~ only an interpreter of the ethics of nature, and resolv- 
ing duty itself, or even salvation, into mere prudence, 
or skill ;—a learning to walk among things, so as not 
to lose one’s balance and fall or be hurt; or, when it is 
lost, finding how to recover and stand up again. 

Closely related to these, or else included among them, 
we are to reckon, with some exceptions, the very intel- 
ligent, influential body of Unitarian teachers of Chris- 
tianity. Maintaining, as they have done with great 
earnestness, the truth of the scripture miracles, they 


12 ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS OF UNITARIANS 


furnish a singular and striking illustration of the ex- 
tent to which a people may be slid away from their 
speculative tenet, by the practical drift of what may be 
, called their working scheme. Denying human depray- 
| ity, the need of a supernatural grace also vanishes, and 
' they set forth a religion of ethics, instead of a gospel to 
ry faith. Their word is practically, not regeneration, but 
[seif-cutture. There is a good seed in us, and we ought 
to make it grow ourselves. The gospel proposes salva- 
tion; a better name is development. Christ is a good 
teacher or interpreter of nature, and only so a redeemer. 
God, they say, has arranged the very scheme of the 
world soas to punish sin and reward virtue; therefore, 
any such hope of forgiveness as expects to be delivered 
of the natural effects of sin by a supernatural and regen- 
erative experience, is vain; because it implies the fail- 
ure of God’s justice and the overturning of a natural 
law. Whoever is delivered of sin, must be delivered 
by such a life as finally brings the great law of jus- 
tice on his side. To be justified freely by grace is 
impossible.t 
Again, the myriad schools of Associationists take it 
as a fundamental assumption, whether consciously or 
. unconsciously, that human nature belongs to the gen- 
eral order of nature, as it comes from God, and that 
nothing is wanting to the full perfection of man’s hap- 
piness, but to have society organized according to na- 
ture, that is scientifically. No new-creation of the soul . 
in good, proceeding from a point above nature, is needed 
or to be expected. The propensities and passions of 
men are all right now; “attractions are proportioned 
to destinies” in them, as in the planets. What is 


1 Dewey’s Sermon on Retribution. 


> 


ASSOCIATIONISTS AND MAGNETISTS 13 


wanted, therefore, is not the supernatural redemption 
of man, but only a scientific reorganization of society. 

xt we have the magnetists or seers of electricity, 

ing other spheres and conditions of being by elec- 
tric impacts, and preparing a religion out of the revela- 
tions of natural clairvoyance and scientific necromancy; 
the more confident of the absurdity of the Christian su- 
pernaturalism, or the plan of redemption by Christ, that 
they have been so mightily illuminated by the magnetic 
revelations. They are greatly elated also by other and 
more superlative discoveries, in the planets and third 
heavens and the two superior states; boasting a more 
perfect and fuller opening of the other world than 
even Christianity has been able to make. 

Again it will be observed that almost any class of 
men, whose calling occupies them much with matter 
and its laws, have always, and now more than ever, a 

—endency to merely naturalistic views of religion. This 
is true of physicians. Continually occupied with the 
phenomena of the body, and its effects on the mind, 
they are likely, without denying Christianity, to re- 
duce it practically to a form of naturalism. So of the 
large and generally intelligent class of mechanics. 
Having it for*the occupation and principal study of ~ 
life to adjust applications of the great laws of chem- 
istry and dynamics, and exercised but little in subjects 
and fields of thought external to mere nature, they 
very many of them come to be practical unbelievers in 
every thing but nature. They believe in cause and 
effect, and are likely to be just as much more skeptical 
in regard to any higher and better faith. Active-minded, 
ingenious, and sharp, but restricted in the range of their 
exercise, they surrender themselves, in great numbers, 
to a feeling of unreality in every thing but nature. 


14 POLITICS 


Again the tendency of modern politics, regarded as 
concerned with popular liberty, is in the same direction. 
Civil government is grounded, as the people are every 
day informed by their leaders, with airs of assumed 
statesmanship, in a social compact; a pure fiction, 
assumed to account for whole worlds of fact; for every 
body knows that no such compact was ever formed, or 
ever supposed to be, by any people in the world. It 
has the advantage, nevertheless, of accounting for the 
political state, atheistically, under mere nature; and is, 
therefore, the more readily accepted, though it really 
accounts for nothing. For if every subject in the civil 
state were in it as a real contractor, joining and sub- 
scribing the contract himself, what is there even then 
to bind him to his contract, save that, in the last de- 

( gree, he is bound by the authority of God and the 
sanctions of religion. Besides there never can be, in 
this view, any such thing as legislation, but only an 
extended process of contracting; for legislation is the 
enactment of laws, and_laws have a morally binding 

—— 
authority on men, not as contractors, but as subjects. 
It seems to be supposed that this doctrine of a social 
compact has some natural agreement with popular in- 
stitutions, where laws are enacted by a major vote; 
whereas the major supposes a minor, non-assenting 
vote; and as this minor vote has been always a fact, 
from first to last, the compact theory fails, after all, to 
show how majorities get a right to govern that is bet- 
ter, even theoretically, than the right of any single 
autocrat. There is, in fact, no conceivable basis of 
civil authority and law, which does not recognize the 
state, as being, in this form or in that, a creation of 
Providence and, as Providence manages the world in 
the interest of redemption, a fact supernatural; which 


POLITICS AND PROGRESS 15 


does not recognize the state as God’s minister in the 
supernatural works and ends of his administration — 
appointed by him to regulate the tempers, restrain the 
passions, redress the wrongs, shield the persons, and so 
to conserve the order of a fallen race, existing only for 
those higher aims which he is prosecuting in their his- 
tory. Still we*are contriving, always, how to get 
some ground of civil order that separates it wholly 
from God. A social compact, popular sovereignty, 
the will of the people, any thing that has an atheistic 
jingle in the sound and stops in the plane of mere 
nature best satisfies us. We renounce, in this manner, 
our true historic foster-mother, religion, taking for the 
oracle and patron saint of our politics Jean Jacques 
Rousseau. And the result is that the immense drill of 
our political life, more far-reaching and powerful than 
the pulpit, or education, or any protest of argument, 
operates continually and with mournful certainty 
against the supernatural faith of Christianity. Hence 
too it is that we hear so much of commerce, travel, lib- 
erty, and the natural spread of great inventions, as causes 
that are starting new ideas, and must finally emancipate 
and raise all the nations of mankind. In which it 
seems to be supposed that there is even a law of self- 
redemption in society itself. Asif these external signs 
or incidents of progress were its causes also; or as if 
they were themselves uncaused by the supernatural 
and quickening power of Christ. Whether Christian- 
ity can finally survive this death-damp of naturalism 
in our political and social ideas, remains to be seen. 

I have only to add, partly as a result of all these 
causes, and partly as a joint cause with them, that the 
popular literature of the times is becoming generally 
saturated with naturalistic sentiments of religion. The 


16 REIGNING LITERATURE 


literature of no other age of the world was ever more 
religious in the form, only the religion of it is, for the 
most part, rather a substitute for Christianity than a 
tribute to its honor ;—a piracy on it, as regards the 
beautiful and sublime precepts of ethics it teaches, but 
a scorner only the more plausible of whatever is neces- 
sary to its highest authority, as a gift from God to the 
world. It praises Christ, as great or greatest among 
the heroes; finds a God in the all, whom it magnifies in 
+ ee pictures of sublimity; rejoices in the conceit 
~ of an essential divinity in the soul and its imagina- 
tions; dramatizes culture, sentiment, and philanthropy ; 
and these, inflated with an airy scorn of all that im- 
plies redemption, it offers to the world, and especially 
to the younger class of the world, as a more captivat- 
ing and plausible religion. 

To pursue the enumeration further is unnecessary. 
What we mean by a discussion of the supernatural 
truth of Christianity is now sufficiently plain. We 
undertake the argument from a solemn conyiction of 
its necessity, and because we see that the more direct 
arguments and appeals of religion are losing their 
power over the public mind and conscience. This is 
true especially of the young who pass into life under 
the combined action of so many causes, conspiring to in- 
fuse a distrust of whatever is supernatural in religion. 
Persons farther on in life are out of the reach of these 
new influences, and, unless their attention is specially 
called to the fact, have little suspicion of what is going 
on in the mind of the rising classes of the world, — 
more and more saturated every day with this insidious 
form of unbelief. And yet we all, with perhaps the 
exception of a few who are too far on to suffer it, are 
more or less infected with the same tendency. Like an 


ORTHODOXY NO SECURITY iurg 


atmosphere, it begins to envelope the common mind of 
the world. We frequently detect its influence in the 
practical difficulties of the young members of the 
churches, who do not even suspect the true cause them- 
selves. Indeed, there is nothing more common than to 
hear arguments advanced and illustrations offered, by 
the most evangelical preachers, that have no force or 
meaning, save what they get from the current naturalism 
of the day. We have even heard a distinguished and 
carefully orthodox preacher deliver a discourse, the 
very doctrine of which was inevitable, unqualified natu- 
ralism. Logically taken and carried out to its proper 
result, Christianity could have had no ground of stand- 
ing left, — so little did the preacher himself understand 
the true scope of his doctrine, or the mischief that was 
beginning to infect his conceptions of the Christian 
truth. 


In the review we have now sketched, it may easily be 
seen on what one point the hostile squadrons of unbelief 
are marching. Never before, since the inauguration of 
Christianity in our world, has any so general and mo- 
mentous issue been made with it as this which now 
engages and gathers to itself, in so many ways, the op- 
posing forces of human thought and society. Before all 
these combinations the gospel must stand, if it stands; 
and against all these must triumph, if it triumphs. 
Either it must yield, or they must finally coalesce and 
become its supporters. 

Do we undertake then, with a presumptuous and even 
preposterous confidence, to overturn all the science, argu- 
ment, influence of the modern age, and so to vindicate 
the supernaturalism of Christianity? By no means. We 
do not conceive that any so heavy task is laid upon us. 


18 WHAT WE DO NOT ATTEMPT, 


On the contrary, we regard all these adverse powers as 
being, in another view, just so many friendly powers, 
every one of which has some contribution to make for 
the firmer settlement and the higher completeness of the 
Christian faith. They are not in pure error, but there 
is a discoverable and valuable truth for us, maintained 
by every one, if only it were adequately conceived and 
set, as it will be, in its fit place and connection. Mr. 
Hume’s argument, for example, contains a great and 
sublime truth; viz., that nothing ever did or will take 
{place out of system, or apart from law — not even mira- 
cles themselves, which must, in some higher view, be as 
truly under law and system as the motions even of the 
\stars. Pantheism has a great truth, and is even wanted, 
as a balance of rectification to the common error that 
places God afar off, outside of his works or above, in 
some unimagined altitude. No doubt there is a truth 
somewhere in spiritism which will yet acerue to the 
benefit of Christianity, or, at least, to an important rec- 
tification of our conceptions of man. So of all the other 
schools and modes of naturalism that I have named. I 
have no jealousy of science, or any fear whether of its 
' facts or its arguments. For God, we may be certain, is 
in no real disagreement with himself. It is only a 
matter of course that, until the great account between 
Christianity and science is liquidated, there should be an 
appearance of collision, or disagreement, which does not 
really exist. As little do we propose to go into a des- 
ultory battle with the manifold schemes of naturalism 
above described; still less to undertake a reconciliation 
of each or any of them with the Christian truth. What 
I propose is simply this; to find a legitimate place for 
5 the supernatural in the system of God, and show tt as a 
i necessary part of the divine system ttself. 


AND WHAT WE DO, 19 


If I am successful, I shall make out an argument for 
the supernatural in Christianity that will save these two 
conditions: —First, the rigid unity of the system of 
_God; secondly, the ic Sek ak Ga thing takes place 
under fixed laws. I shall make out a conception both 
of nature and of s nd_of supernatural re redemption by Je esus_ 
Christ, the | incarnate Word of God, which exactly meets 
the_magnificent_o outline-view of God’s universal plan, 
given. by the great apostle to the Gentiles, —‘ And he 
is before all ERERES, and by him [zn him, it should be,] 
all things consist.” Christianity, in other words, is not 
an afterthought of God, but a forethought. It even 
antedates the world of nature, and is “before all things,” 
—“before the foundation of the world.” Instead of 
coming into the world, as being no part of the system, 
or to interrupt and violate the system of things, they 
all consist, come together into system, in Christ, as the 
center of unity and the head of the universal plan. The 
world was made to include Christianity ; under that be- 
comes a proper and complete frame of order; to that 
crystallizes, in all its appointments, events, and experi- 
ences ; in that has the design or final cause revealed, by 
which all its distributions, laws, and historic changes 
are determined and systematized. All which is beauti- 
fully and even sublimely expressed in the single word 
“con-sist,’ a word that literally signifies standing together ; 
as when many parts coalesce in a common whole. Hence 
it is the more to be regretted that the translators, in the 
rendering “ by him,” instead of the more literal and exact 
rendering “7m him,” have so far confused the signifi- 
cance and obscured the beauty of a passage that, prop- 
erly translated, is so remarkable for the transcendent, 
philosophic sublimity of its import. 

The same truth is declared more circumstantially and 


20 TO FORTIFY 


as much less succinctly in the gospel of John. “ All 
things are made by him, and without him [7.e., apart 
from him as the formal cause or regulative idea of the 
plan,] was not any thing made that was made.” Or to 
the same effect, —‘‘ he was in the world,” —“ he came 
unto his own,” affirming that he was here before he came 
as the son of Mary; and that, when he came, he came 
not as an intruder, defiant of all previous order in 
nature, but as coming unto “his own,” to fulfill the 
creative idea centered in his person, and to complete 
the original order of the plan. 


Such is the general object of the treatise I now under- 
take; and, if I am able, in this manner, to obtain a solid, 
intellectual footing for the supernatural, evincing not 

| only the compatibility, but the essentially complemen- 
tary relation of nature and the supernatural, as terms 
included, ab origine, in the unity of God’s plan, or sys- 
tem, I shall, of course, produce a conviction, as much 
‘more decided and solid, of those great practical truths, 
| which belong to the supernatural side of Christianity ; 
\such as incarnation, regeneration, justification by faith, 
‘divine guidance, and prayer ; truths which are now held 
so feebly, and in a manner so timid and partial, as to rob 
them of their genuine power. Any thing which dis- 
places the present jealousy of what is supernatural, or 
stiffens the timidity of faith, must, as we may readily 
see, be an important contribution to Christian experi- 
ence and the practical life of religion. Nothing do we 
need so deeply as a new inauguration of faith; or, 
perhaps I should rather say, a reinauguration of the 
apostolic faith, and the spirit which distinguished the 
| apostolic age. And yet a reinauguration of this must, ix 
ql some very important sense, be a new inauguration ; for 


CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, 21 


it can be accomplished only by some victory over natu- 
ralism, the repares a. rational ‘foundation for the 
supernatural - sue as: was not wantéd, and w wasethere- 
fore, impossibté to be prepared, in the first age of the 
church. 

It is scarcely necessary to add that, while I am looking 
with interest to the emboldening of faith in the great 
truths of holy experience, I have a particular looking in 
my argument toward the authentication of the Christian 
scriptures, in a way that avoids the inherent difficulties 
of the question of a punctually infallible and verbal 
inspiration. These difficulties, I feel constrained to 
admit, are insuperable ; for, when the divine authority 
of the scriptures is made to depend thus on the question 
of their most rigid, strictest, most punctual infallibility, 
they are made, in fact, to stand or fall by mere minima 
and not by any thing principal in them, or their inspira- 
tion. And then whatever smallest doubt can be raised, 
at any most trivial point, suffices to imperil every thing, 
and the main question is taken at the greatest possible 
disadvantage. The argument so stated must inevitably 
be lost ; as, in fact, it always is. For it has even to be 
given up, at the outset, by concessions that leave it noth- 
ing on which to stand.. For no sturdiest advocate of a 
verbal and punctual inspiration can refuse to admit 
variations of copy, and the probable or possible mistake 
of this or that manuscript in a transfer of names and 
numerals. It is equally difficult -to withhold the ad- 
mission, here and there, of a possible interpolation, or 
that words have crept into the text that were once in 
the margin. Starting, then, with a definition of infalli- 
bility, fallibility is at once and so far admitted. After 
all, the words, syllables, iotas of the book are coming 
into question, — the infallibility is logically at an end 


22 TO ESTABLISH 


even by the supposition. The moment we begin to ask 
what manuscript we shall follow? what words and 
numerals correct? what interpolations extirpate? we 
have possibly a large work on hand, and where is the 
limit? Shall we stop short of giving up 1 John v. 7, 
or shall we go a large stride beyond, and give up the 
first chapters of Matthew and Luke? We are also 
obliged to admit that the canon was not made by men 
infallibly guided by the Spirit ; and then the possibility 
appears to logically follow that, despite of any power 
they had to the contrary, some book may have been let 
into the canon which, with many good things, has some 
specks of error init. Besides, if the question is thrown 
back upon us, at this point, we are obliged to admit, 
and do, as a familiar point of orthodoxy, that our own 
polarities are disturbed, our judgment discolored, by 
sin ; so that, if the book is infallible, the sense of it as 
infallible is not and can not be in us; how then can we 
affirm it, or maintain it, in any such manner of strict- 
ness and exact perception? We could not even sustain 
the infallibility of God in this manner; 2%.e., because 
we are able to know it, item by item, as comprehending 
in ourselves a complete sense of his infallibility. We 
establish God’s infallibility only by a constructive tise 
of generals, the particulars of which are conceived by 
us only in the faintest, most partial manner. 
Now these difficulties, met in establishing a close and 
punctual infallibility, are rather logical than real, and 
originate, not in any defect of the scriptures, but in a 
statement which puts us in a condition to make nothing 
of a good cause, —a condition to be inevitably worsted. 
Indeed there is no better proof of a divine force and 
authority in the scriptures, able to affirm and always 
affirming itself in its own right, even to the end of the 


THE GOSPEL HISTORY 23 


world, than that they continue to hold their ground so 
firmly, when the speculative issue joined in their behalf 
has been so badly chosen and, if we speak of what is true 
logically, so uniformly lost. 

I see no way to gain the verdict which, in fact, they 
have hitherto gained for themselves, but to change our 
method and begin at another point, just where they 
themselves begin ; to let go the minima and lay hold of 
the principals ;—those great, outstanding verities, in 
which they lay their foundations, and by which they 
assert themselves. As long as the advocates of strict, 
infallible inspiration are so manifestly tangled and lost 
in the trivialities they contend for, these portentous 
advances of naturalism will continue. And, as many 
are beginning already, with no fictitious concern, te 
imagine that Christianity is now being put upon its last 
trial,— whether to stand or not they hardly dare be 
confident, — why should they be farther discouraged by 
adhering to a mode of trial which, in being lost, really 
decides nothing. Let the church of God, and all the 
friends of revelation, as a word of the Lord to faith, 
turn their thoughts upon an issue more intelligent and 
significant, and one that can be certainly sustained 


CHAPTER II 
DEFINITIONS.— NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL 


IN order to the intelligent prosecution of our subject, 
we need, first of all, to settle on the true import of cer- 
tain words and phrases, by the undistinguishing and 
confused use of which, more than by any other cause, 
the unbelieving habit of our time has been silently and 
imperceptibly determined. They are such as these : — 
“nature,” “the system of nature,” “ the laws of nature,” 
“universal nature,” “the supernatural,” and the like. 
The first and last named, “nature” and “the super- 
natural,” most need our attention; for, if these are 
carefully distinguished, the others will scarcely fail to 
yield us their true meaning. 

The Latin etymology of the word nature presents the 
true force of the term, clear of all ambiguity. The 
nature [natura] of a thing is the future participle of its 
being or becoming — its about-to-be, or its about- to-come-to~ 
pass, — and the radical idea is, that theré i is, in the thing 
whose nature we speak of, or in the whole of things 
called nature, an about-to-be, a definite futurition, a 
fixed law of coming to pass, s such that, given the thing, 
or whole of things, all the rést will follow by an inherent 
necessity. In this view, nature, sometimes called 
|“universal nature,” and sometimes “the system of 
nature,” is that created realm of being or substance 
which has an actings a going on or process from within 


¢ 24 
P 


NATURE DEFINED 2 


itself, under and by its own laws. Or, if we say, with 
some, that the laws are but another name for the 
immediate actuating power of God, still it makes no dif- 
ference, in any other respect, with our conception of the 
system. It is yet as if the laws, the powers, the actings, 
were inherent in the substances, and were by them 
determined. It is still to our scientific, separated from 
our religious contemplation, a chain of causes and effects, 
or ascheme of orderly succession, determined from within 
the scheme itself. 

Having settled, thus, our conception of nature, our 
;conception of the supernatural corresponds. That is 
supernatural, whatever it be, that is either not in the} 
‘chain of natural cause and effect, or which acts on the! 


‘chain of cause and effect, in nature, from without ) 
‘the chain. Thus if any event transpires in the bosom, 
te upon the platform of what is called nature, which is 
not from nature itself, or is varied from the process 
nature would execute by her own laws, that is super- 
natural, by whatever power it is wrought. Suppose, 
for example, (which we may, for illustration’s sake, 
even though it can not be,) that there were another 
system of nature incommunicably separate from ours, 
some “famous continent of universe,” like that on 
which Bunyan stumbled, “as he walked through many 
regions and countries;” if, then, this other universe 
were swung up side by side with ours, great disturb- 
ance would result, and the disturbance would be, to 
us, supernatural, because from without our system of 
nature; for, though the laws of our system are acting, 
still, in the disturbance, they are not, by the suppo- 
sition, acting in their own system, or conditions, but 
by an action that is varied by the forces and reciprocal 
actings of the other. So if the processes, combinations, 


26 ALSO THE SUPERNATURAL 


and results of our system of nature are interrupted, or 
varied by the action, whether of God, or angels, or men, 
so as to bring to pass what would not come to pass in it 
by its own internal action, under the laws of mere cause 
and effect, the variations are, in like manner, super- 
natural. And exactly this we expect to show: viz., 
that God has, in fact, erected another and higher sys- 
‘tem, that of spiritual being and government, for which 
nature exists; a system not under the law of cause and 
effect, but ruled and marshaled under other kinds of 
laws and able continually to act upon, or vary the action 
of the processes of nature. If, accordingly, we speak of 
system, this spiritual realm or department is much more 
properly called a system than the natural, because it is 
closer to God, higher in its consequence, and contains 
in itself the ends, or final causes, for which the other 
exists and to which the other is made to be subservient. 
, There is, however, a constant action and reaction be- 
tween the two, and, strictly speaking, they are both 
together, taken as one, the true system of God; fora 
system, in the most proper and philosophic sense of the 
word, is a complete and absolute whole, which can not 
be taken as a part or fraction of any thing. r 
We do not mean, of course, by these definitions, or 
distinctions of the natural and supernatural, to assume 
the impropriety of the great multitude of expressions, 
in which these words are more loosely employed. They 
may well enough be so employed; the convenience of 
_ speech requires it; but it is only the more necessary, 
on that account, that we thoroughly understand our- 
selves when we use them in this manner. 
Thus we sometimes speak of “ the system of nature,” 
using the word nature in a loose and general way, as 
comprising all created existence. But if we accommo- 


x 


LOOSER USES, 27 


date ourselves in this manner, it behooves us to see 
that we do not, in using such a term, slide into a false 
philosophy which overturns all obligation, by assuming 
the real universality of cause and effect, and the sub- 
jection of human actions to that law. It may be true 
that men are only things, determinable under the same 
conditions of causality, but it will be soon enough to 
assert that fact, when it is ascertained by particular 
inquiry ; which inquiry is much more likely to result in 
the impression that the phrase, “system of nature,” 
understood in this manner as implying that human 
actions are determined by mechanical laws, is much as 
if one were to speak of the “system of the school- 
house,” as supporting the inference that the same kind 
of frame-work that holds the timbers together, is also 
to mortise and pin fast the moral order of the school. In 
the same manner, we sometimes say “ universal nature,” 
when we only catch up the term to denote the whole 
creation or universe, without deciding any thing in 
regard to the possible universality of nature properly 
defined. To this, again, there is no objection, if we 
are only careful not to slide into the opinion that 
natural laws and causes comprehend every thing; as 
multitudes do, without thought, in simply yielding to 
the force of such a term. 

The word “ Nature,” again, is currently used in our 
modern literature as the name of a Universal Power; 
be it an eternal fate, or an eternal system of matter 
reigning by its necessary laws, or an eternal God who 
is the All, and is, in fact, nowise different from a sys- 
tem of matter. Nature undergoes, in this manner, a 
kind of literary apotheosis, and receives the mock honors 
of a dilettanti worship. And the new nature-religion is 
the more valued, because both the god and the worship, 


28 PERMISSIBLE WITH CAUTION 


being creatures of the reigning school of letters, are 
supposed to be of a more superlative and less common 
quality. But, though some thing is here said of religion, 
with a religious air, the word nature, it will be found, 
is used in exact accordance still with its rigid and 
proper meaning, as denoting that which has its fixed 
laws of coming to pass within itself. The only abuse- 
consists in the assumed universal extent of nature, by 
which it becomes a fate, an all-devyouring abyss of 
necessity, in which God, and man, and all free beings 
are virtually swallowed up. If it should happen that 
nature proper has no such extent; but is, instead, a 
comparatively limited and meager fraction of the true 
universe, the new religion would appear to have but a 
very shallow foundation, and to be, in fact, a fraud, as 
pitiful as it is airy and pretentious. 

We also speak of a nature zn free beings, and count 
upon it as a motive, cause, or ground of certainty, in 
respect of their actions. Thus we assign the nature of 
God, and the nature of man, as reasons of choice and 
roots of character, representing that it is “ the nature 
of God” to be holy, or (Git may be) “the nature of 
man to do wrong.” Nor is there any objection to 
this use of the word “nature,” taken as popular lan- 
guage. There is, doubtless, in God, as a free intelli- 
gence, a constitution, having fixed laws, answering 
exactly to our definition of nature. That there is a 
proper and true nature in man we certainly know; for 
all the laws of thought, memory, association, feeling, in © 
the human soul are as fixed as the laws of the heavenly 
‘bodies. It is only the will that is not under the law of 
cause and effect; and the other functions are, by their 
laws, subordinated, in a degree, to the uses of the will 
and its directing sovereignty over their changes and 


LOOSER USES PERMISSIBLE 29 


processes. And yet*the will, calling these others a 
nature, is in turn solicited and drawn by them, just 
as the expressions alluded to imply, save that they 
have, in fact, no causative agency on the will at all. 

_They are the ‘will’s reasons, that in view of which it 
acts, so that, with a given nature, it may be expected, 
with a certain qualified degree of confidence, to act 
thus or thus; but they are never causes on the will, and 
the choices of the will are never their effects. There- 
fore, when we say that it is “the nature of man to do 
this,” the language is to be understood in a secondary, | 
tropical sense, and not as when we say that it is the | 
nature of fire to burn or water to freeze. 

As little would I be understood to insist that the 
term supernatural is always to be used in the exact 
sense I have given it. Had the word been commonly 
used in this close, sharply-defined meaning, much of 
our present unbelief, or misbelief, would have been 
obviated ; for these aberrations result almost univer- 
sally from our use of this word in a manner so indefi- 
nite and so little intelligent. Instead of regarding the 
supernatural as that which acts on the chain of cause 
and effect in nature from without the chain, and adher- 
ing to that sense of the term, we use it, very commonly, 
in a kind of ghostly, marveling sense, as if relating to 
some apparition, or visional wonder, or it may be to 
some desultory, unsystematizable action, whether of 
angels or of God. Such uses of the word are permissi- 
ble enough by dictionary laws, but they make the word 
an offense to all who are any way inclined to the 
rationalizing habit. On the other hand, there are 
many who claim to be acknowledged as adherents of a 
supernatural faith, with as little definite understanding. 
Believing in a God superior to nature, acting from 


30 DISTINCTION SEEN 


behind and through her laws, they suppose that they are, 
of course, to be classed as believers in a supernatural 
being and religion. But the genuine supernaturalism 
of Christianity signifies a great deal more than this ; 
viz., that God is acting from without on the lines of 
cause and effect in our fallen world and our disordered 
| humanity, to produce what, by no mere laws of nature, 
“will ever come to pass. Christianity, therefore, is 
supernatural, not because it acts through the laws of 
nature, limited by, and doing the work of, the laws; 
but because it acts regeneratively and new-creatively 
to repair the damage which those laws, in their penal 
‘action, would otherwise perpetuate. Its very -distinc- 
A tion, as a redemptive agency, lies in the fact that it 
i enters into nature, in this regenerative and rigidly 
supernatural way, to reverse and restore the lapsed 
* condition of sinners. 


But the real import of our distinction between nature 
and the supernatural, however accurately stated in 
words, will not fully appear, till we show it in the 
concrete ; for it does not yet appear that there is, in 
fact, any such thing known as the supernatural agency 
defined, or that there are in esse any beings, or classes 
of beings, who are distinguished by the exercise of such 
anagency. That what we have defined as nature truly 
exists will not be doubted, but that there is any being 
or power in the universe, who acts, or can act upon the 
chain of cause and effect in nature from without the 
chain, many will doubt and some will strenuously deny. 
Indeed the great difficulty heretofore encountered, in 
establishing the faith of a supernatural ageney, has 
been due to the fact that we have made a ghost of it; 
discussing it as if it were a marvel of superstition, and 


IN THE WORLD OF FACT 81 


no definite and credible reality. Whereas, it will appear, 
as we confront our difficulty more thoughtfully and 
take its full force, that the moment we begin to con- 


ceive ourselves rightly, we become ourselves supernat- . 


ural. It is no longer necessary to go hunting after 
marvels, apparitions, suspensions of the laws of nature, 
to find the supernatural ; it meets us in what is least 
transcendent and most familiar, even in ourselves. In 
ourselves we discover a tier of existences that are above 
nature and, in all their most ordinary actions, are doing 


their will upon it. The very idea of our personality is \: 


that of a being not under the law of cause and effect, 
‘a being supernatural. This one point clearly appre- 


hended, all the difficulties of our subject are at once 


relieved, if not absolutely and completely removed. 
If any one is startled or shocked by what appears to 
be the extravagance of this position, let him recur to 


our definition ; viz., that nature is that world of sub- y 
stance, whose laws are laws of cause and effect, and 


whose events transpire, in orderly succession, under 
those laws ; the supernatural is that range of substance, 
if any such-there be, that acts upon the chain of cause 
and effect in nature from without the chain, producing, 
thus, results that, by mere nature, could not come to 
+ pass. It is not said, be it observed, as is sometimes 
* done, that the supernatural implies a suspension of the 
" laws of nature, a causing them, for the time, not to be 
— that, perhaps, is never done —it is only said that 
we, aS powers, not in the line of cause and effect, can 
set the causes in nature at work, in new combinations 
otherwise never occurring, and produce, by our action 
upon nature, results which she, as nature, could never 
produce by her own internal acting. 

Illustrations are at hand without number. Thus, 


82 SUPERNATURAL ACTION 


nature, for example, never made a pistol, or gunpowder, 
or pulled a trigger ; all which being done, or procured 
to be done, by the criminal, in his act of murder, he is 
hung for what is rightly called his unnatural deed. So 
of things not criminal ; nature never built a house, or 
modeled a ship, or fitted a coat, or invented a steam- 
engine, or wrote a book, or framed a constitution. 
These are all events that spring out of human liberty, 
acting in and upon the realm of cause and effect, to 
produce results and combinations, which mere cause 
and effect could not; and, at some point of the process 
in each, we shall be found coming down upon nature, 
, by an act of sovereignty just as peremptory and mys- 
,terious as that which is discovered in a miracle, only 
(that a miracle is a similar coming down upon it from 
another and higher being, and not from ourselves. 
‘Thus, for example, in the firing of the pistol, we find 
materials brought together and compounded for making 
an explosive gas, an arrangement prepared to strike a 
fire into the substance compounded, an arm pulled 
back to strike the fire, muscles contracted to pull back 
the arm, a nervous telegraph running down from the 
brain, by which some order has been sent to contract 
the muscles ; and then, having come to the end of the 
chain of natural causes, the jury ask, who sent the man- — 
date down upon the nervous telegraph, ordering the 
said contraction? And, having found, as their true 
answer, that the arraigned criminal did it, they offer 
this as their verdict, and on the strength of the verdict 
he is hung. He had, in other words, a power to set in 
order a line of causes and effects, existing elementally 
in nature, and then, by a sentence of his will, to start 
the line, doing his unnatural deed of murder. If it be 
inquired how he was able to command the nervous tele- 


FAMILIAR 33 


graph in this manner, we can not tell, any more than we 
can show the manner of a miracle. The same is true in 
regard to all our most common actions. If one simply 
lifts a weight, overcoming, thus far, the great law of 
gravity, we may trace the act mechanically back in the 
same way; and if we do it, we shall come, at last, to 
the man acting in his personal arbitrament, and shall 
find him sending down his mandate to the arm, sum- 
moning its contractions and sentencing the weight to 
rise. In which, as we perceive, he has just so much of 
power given him to vary the incidents and actings of 
nature as determined by her own laws — so much, that 
is, of power supernatural. 

And so all the combinations we make in the harness- 
ing of nature’s powers imply, in the last degree, 
thoughts, mandates of will, that are, at some point, 
peremptory over the motions by which we handle, and 
move, and shape, and combine the substances and causes 
of the world. And to what extent we may go on to 
alter, in this manner, the composition of the world, few 
persons appear to consider. For example, it is not ab- 
surd to imagine the human race, at some future time, 
when the population and the works of industry are 
vastly increased, kindling so many fires, by putting 
wood and coal in contact with fire, as to burn up or 
fatally vitiate the world’s atmosphere. That the con- 
dition of nature will, in fact, be so far changed by hu- 
man agency, is probably not to be feared. We only) 
say that human agency, in its power over nature, holds, 
or may well enough be imagined to hold, the sover- 
eignty of the process. Meantime, it is even probable, 
as a matter of fact, that infections and pestilential dis- 
eases invading, every now and then, some order of veg- 
etable or animal life, are referable, in the last degree, 


34 THE WILL IS NOT 


to something done upon the world by man. For in- 


deed we shall show, before we have done, that the 


scheme of nature itself is a scheme unstrung and mis- 
tuned, to a very great degree, by man’s agency in it, so 
as to be rather unnature, after all, than nature ; and, for 
just that reason, demanding of God, even for system’s 
sake, in the highest range of that term, miracle and 
redemption. 

Suffice it, for the present, simply to clear, as well as 


_ we are able, this main point, the fact of a properly 


supernatural power in man. Thus, some one, going 
back to the act by which the pistol was fired, will imag- 
ine, after all, that the murderer’s act in the firing was 
itself caused in him by some condition back of what we 
call his choice, as truly as the explosion of the powder 
was caused by the fire. Then, why not blame the 
powder, we answer, as readily as the man— which 
most juries would have some difficulty in doing, though 
none at all in blaming the man? The nature of the 
objection is purely imaginary, as, in fact, the common 
sense, if we should not rather say the common conscious- 
ness of the word decides ; for we are all conscious of 
acting from ourselves, uncaused in our action. The 
murderer knows within himself that he did the deed, 
and that nothing else did it through him. So his con- 
sciousness testifies — so the consciousness of every man 
revising his actions — and no real philosopher will ever 
undertake to substitute the verdict of consciousness, 
by another, which he has arrived at only by speculation 
or a logical practice in words. The sentence of con- 
sciousness is final. 

Hence the absurd and really blamable ingenuity of 
those would-be philosophers who, not content with the 
clear, indisputable report of consciousness in such a case, 


A SCALE-BEAM 30 


go on to ask whether the wrong-doer of any kind was 
not acting, in his wrong, under motives and determined 
by the strongest motives, and, since he is a being made 
to act in this manner, whether, after all, he really acted 
himself, any more than other natural substances do 
when they yield to the strongest cause? Doubtless he 
acted under motives, and probably enough he felt be- 
side that half his crime was in his motive, being that 
which his own bad heart supplied. The matter of the ¥ 
strongest motive is more doubtful; but, if it be true, 
in every case, that the wrong-doer chooses what to him 

is the strongest motive, it by no means follows that he 
acts in the way of a scale-beam, swayed by the heaviest 
weight; for the strength of the motive may consciously ~ 
be derived, in great part, from what his own perversity 
puts into it; and, what is more, he may be as fully con- 
scious that he acts, in every case, from himself, in pure 
self-determination, as he would be if he acted for no 
motive at all. Consciously he is not a scale-beam, or 
any passive thing, but a self-determining agent; and if- 
he looks out always for the strongest motive, he still as 
truly acts from his own personal arbitrament as if he 
were always pursuing the weakest. 

It does not, however, appear, from any evidence we 
can discover, that human action is determined uniform] 
by the strongest motive. That is the doctrine of Ed- 
wards, in his famous treatise on the will,! but as far as 


1 The fortunes of this Treatise, in the world of morals and religion, 
have been quite as remarkable as the puzzle it has raised in the world 
of letters. The immediate object of the writer was gained, and the 
faith of God’s eternal government, assailed by a crazy scheme of lib- 
erty which brought in open question the divine foreknowledge and the 
proper self-understanding of God in his plan, was effectually vindi- 
cated. So far the argument availed to serve the genuine purposes of 
religion. But, from that day to this, passing over to the side opposite, 


36 NOT DETERMINED BY 


there is any appearance of force in his argument, it con- 
sists in the inference drawn, or judgment passed, after 
any act of choice, that the inducing motive must have 
been the strongest because it prevailed. Whereas, ap- 
pealing to his simple consciousness, he would have found 
that he had never a thought of the superior strength of 
the motive chosen, before the choice ; and that, when he 
ascertained the fact of its superiority, it was only by an 
inference or speculative judgment drawn from the choice 
— just as some harvester, noting the heavy perspiration 
that drenches his body in the field, will judge from such 
a sign that he must be dissolving with heat; when the 
real sense of his body, wiser and truer than his logic, is 
that he is being cooled. And what, moreover, if it 
should happen that Edwards, in his inference, is only 
carrying over into the world of mind a judgment 
formed in the world of matter; subjecting human souls 
to the analogy of scale-beams, and concluding that, 
since nature yields to the strongest force, the super- 
natural must do the same. Meantime, what is the 
consciousness testifying? Here is the whole question. 
it has been turned more and more disastrously against the Christian 
truth, and even against the first principles of moral obligation. 
Priestley was an implicit believer in the doctrine, holding it as the foun- 
dation principle of a scheme of necessity which could hardly be said 
to leave a real place for duty in the world. And now, in our own day, 
it has descended to the level of the subterranean infidelity, and be- 
come a familiar and standing argument with almost every moral out- 
cast, who has thought enough in him to know that he is annoyed by 
the distinctions of virtue. Having turned philosopher on just this 
point and shown that we are all governed by the strongest motive, he 
asks, with an air of triumph, where, then, is the place for blame? 
What do we all but just what we are made to do? Could Edwards 
return to look on the uses now made of his argument, his saintly spirit 
might possibly be stirred with some doubts of its validity. 


Compare the able statement of this subject by Harris. — (Primeval 
Man, 100, Sec. VI.) 


THE STRONGEST MOTIVE 37 


There is no place here for a volume, or even for the 
amount of a syllogism. Find what the consciousness 
testifies and that, all tricks of argument apart, is the 
truth. 

Taking, then, this simple issue, the verdict we are 
quite sure is against the doctrine of Edwards ; viz., that, 
in all wrong, or blamable action, we consciously take 
the weakest motive and most worthless; and, partly for 
that reason, blame our own folly and perversity. It 
may be that the good rejected stands superior only 
before our rational convictions, while the enticement 
followed stirs more -actively our lusts and passions. 
Still we know, and believe, and deeply feel, at the time, 
—we even shudder it may be in the choice, at the sense 
of our own perversity — that we are choosing the worst 
and meanest thing, casting away the gold and grasping 
after the dirt. Probably a good many crude-minded 
persons, little capable of reporting the true verdict of 
their consciousness, would answer immediately, after 
any such act of choice, that they made it because the 
motive was strongest ; for every most vulgar mind is 
so far under the great law of dynamics as to judge that | 
whatever force prevails must be the strongest. Besides, 
how could he be a reasonable being if he chose the 
weakest motive ; therefore it must be that he chose the 
strongest. So it stands, not as any report of conscious- 
ness, but simply as a must be of the logical understanding. 
Whereas, the real sin of the choice was exactly this and 
nothing else, that the wrong-doer followed after the 
weakest and worst, and did not act asa reasonable being 
should ; and that is what his consciousness, if he could 
get far back enough into the sense of the moment, 
would report. Nor does it vary at all the conclusion 
that a wrong-doer chooses the weakest motive, to imag- 


38 THE WILL NOT UNDER 


ine, with many loose-minded teachers, that the right is 
only postponed, and the wrong chosen for the moment, 
with a view to secure the double benefit, both of the 
right and the wrong; for the real question, at the time, 
is, in every such case, whether it is wisest, best, and 
every way most advantageous, to make the delay and 
try for the double benefit; and no man ever yet be- 


lieved that it was. Never was there a case of wrong or 


sinful choice, in which the agent believed that he was 
really choosing the strongest, or weightiest and most 
aluable motive.! 


1A certain class of theologians may, perhaps, imagine that such a 
view of choice takes away the ground of the Divine foreknowledge. 
How can God foreknow what choices men may form, when, for aught 
that appears, they as often choose against the strongest motive as with 
it? He could not foreknow any thing, we answer, under such condi- 
tions, if he were obliged to find out future things, as the astronomers 
make out almanacs, by computation. But he is a being, not who com- 
putes, but who, by the eternal necessity even of his nature, intuits every 
thing. His foreknowledge does not depend on his will, or the adjust- 
ment of motives to make us will thus or thus, but he foreknows every 
thing first conditionally, in the world of possibility, before he creates, 
or determines any thing to be, in the world of fact. Otherwise, all 
his purposes would be grounded in ignorance, not in wisdom, and his 
knowledge would consist in following after his will, to learn what his 
will has blindly determined. This is not the scripture doctrine, which 
grounds all the purposes of God in his wisdom; that is, in what he 
perceives by his eternal intuitive foreknowledge of what is contained 
in all possible systems and combinations before creation — *‘ whom he 
did foreknow, them he also did predestinate ’? — ‘‘ elect, according 
to the foreknowledge of God.’’ If, then, God foreknows, or intuitively 
knows, all that is in the possible system and the possible man, without 
calculation, he can have little difficulty after that, in foreknowing the 
actual man, who is nothing but the possible in the world of possibles, 
set on foot and become actual in the world of actuals. So far, there- 
fore, as the doctrine of Edwards was contrived to support the certainty 
of God’s foreknowledge, and lay a basis for the systematic government 
of the world and the universal sovereignty of God’s purposes, it appears 
to be quite unnecessary. 


~ 


CAUSE AND EFFECT 39 


So far, then, is man from being any proper item of 
nature. He is under no law of cause and effect in his 
| choices. He stands out clear and sovereign as a being 
supernatural, and his definition is that he is an original 
power, acting, not in the line of causality, but from him- 
self. He is not independent of nature in the sense of 
peing separated from it in his action, but he is in it, 
environed by it, acting through it, partially sovereign 
over it, always sovereign as regards his self-determina- 
tion, and only not completely sovereign as regards exe- 
cuting all that he wills in it. In certain parts or 
departments of the soul itself, such as memory, appetite, 
passion, attention, imagination, association, disposition, 
the will-power in him is held in contact, so to speak, 
‘ with conditions and qualities that are dominated partly 
by laws of cause and effect; for these faculties are 
partly governed by their own laws, and partly submit- 
ted to his governing will by their own laws; so that 
when he will exercise any control over them, or turn 
them about to serve his purpose, he can do it, in a quali- 
fied sense and degree, by operating through their laws. 
As far as they are concerned, he is pure nature, and he 
is only a power superior to cause and effect at the par- 
ticular point of volition where his liberty culminates, 
and where the administration he is to maintain over his 
whole nature centers. 

It is also a part of the same general view that, as all 
functions of the soul but the will are a nature, and are 
only qualifiedly subjected to the will by their laws, the 
‘will, without ever being restricted in its self-determina- 
i tion, will often be restricted, as regards executive force 
to perform what it wills. In this matter of executive 
' force or capacity, we are under physiological and cere- 
bral limitations; limitations of association, want, condi- 


40 EXECUTIVE FORCE 


tion ; limitations of miseducated thought, perverted 
sensibility, prejudice, superstition, a second nature of 
evil habit and passion; by which, plainly enough, our 
‘capacity of doing or becoming is greatly reduced. 
| This, in fact, is the grand, all-conditioning truth of 
Christianity itself; viz., that man has no ability, in 
himself and by merely acting in himself, to become 
right and perfect; and that, hence, without some exten- 
sion to him from without and above, some approach and 
ministration that is supernatural, he can never become 
what his own ideals require. And therefore it is the 
more remarkable that so many are ready, in all ages, to 
J take up the notion, and are even doing it now, as a 
fresh discovery, that these stringent limitations on our 
capacity take away the liberty of our will. As if the 
question of executive force, the ability to make or be- 
come, had any thing to do with our self-determining 
liberty! At the point of the will itself we may still be 
as free, as truly original and self-active, as if we could 
do or execute all that we would; otherwise, freedom 
would be impossible, except on the condition of being 
omnipotent ; and even then, as in due time we shall 
see, would be environed by many insuperable necessi- 
ties. As long ago as when Paul found it present with 
him to will, but could not find how to perform, this 
{distinction between volitional self-determination and 
executive capacity began to be recognized, and has been 
recognized and stated, in every subsequent age, till now. 
No one is held, even for a moment, to a bad and wrong 
{self-determination, simply because he has not the 
executive force to will himself into an angel, or because 
he can not become, unhelped, and at once, all that he 
| would. He is therefore still a fair subject of blame ; 
"partly because he has narrowed his capacities, or possi- 


UNDER LIMITATIONS 41 


bilities, of doing or becoming, by his former sin, and 
partly because he consciously does not will the right 
and struggle after God now, which he is under perfect 
obligation to do, because the terms of duty are absolute 
or unconditional ; and, if possible, still more perfect 
because he has helps of grace and favor put in his reach, 
to be laid hold of, which, if he accepts them, will infal- 
libly medicate the disabilities he is under. 

That mankind, as being under sin, are under limita- 
‘tions of executive ability, unable to do and become all 
‘that is required of them by their highest ideals of 
thought, is then no new doctrine. Christianity is 
based in the fact of such a disability, and affirms it 
constantly as a fact that creates no infringement of 
responsibility and personal liberty at all, as regards 
the particular sphere of the will itself. And therefore 
it will not be expected of any Christian that he will 
be greatly impressed by what are sometimes offered 
now as original and peremptory decisions against 
human liberty, grounded in the fact that man is not 
omnipotent — not able to do or become, what he is 
able to think. Thus we have the following, offered as 
a final disposal of the question of liberty, by a very 
brilliant, entertaining, and often very acute writer : — 
“Do you want an image of ‘the human will, or the 
self-determining principle, as compared with its pre- 
arranged and impossible restrictions? A drop of 
water imprisoned in a crystal; you may see such a 
one in any mineralogical collection. One little particle 
in the crystalline prism of the solid universe... . 
The chief planes of its inclosing solid are of course 
organization, education, condition. Organization may 
reduce the will to nothing, as in some idiots; and, 
from this zero, the scale mounts upward, by slight 





42 SELF-DETERMINATION STILL 


gradations. Education is only second to nature. im- 
agine all the infants born this year in Boston and 
Timbuctoo to change places! Condition does less, 
but ‘Give me neither poverty nor riches’ was the 
prayer of Agur, and with good reason. If there is any 
improvement in modern theology, it is in getting out 
of the region of pure abstractions, and taking these 
every-day forces into account.” ! 

It may have been a fault of the former times that, in 
judgments of human character and conduct, no suffi- 
cient allowance was made for these “ every-day forces ” 
and others which might be named; if so, let the mis- 
take be corrected; but to imagine that the freedom, or 

/self-determining liberty of the human will is to be 
settled by any such external references, even starts 
the suspicion that the idea itself of the will has not 
yet arrived. So when the doctrine is located as being 
a something in “the region of pure abstractions,” 
because it is not found by some scalpel inspection, or 
out-door hunt in the social conditions of life. What 
can be further off from all abstractions than the im- 

, mediate, living, central, all-dominating consciousness 
of our own self-activity ? Is consciousness an abstrac- 
tion? Is any thing further off from abstractions, or 
more impossible to be classed with them? On the con- 
trary, the very conceit here allowed, that a great 
question of consciousness may be settled by external 
processes of deduction, and by generalizations that do 
not once touch the fact, is only an attempt to make an 
abstraction of it. And yet, after it is done and seems 
to be finally disposed of in that manner, after the dis- 
covery is fully made out that our self-determining will 
is only “a drop of water imprisoned in a erystal. 


1 Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 1858, p. 464. 


A FACT OF CONSCIOUSNESS 43 


one little particle in the crystalline prism of the solid 
universe,” who is there, not excepting the just now very 
much humbled discoverer himself, who does not know, 
every day of his life, and does not show, a thousand 
times a day, that he has the sense in him of something 
different. Even if he does no more than humorously 
dub himself Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, it will 
be sufficiently plain that his autocracy is a much more 
considerable figure with him than a drop of water in a 
crystal. He most evidently imagines some presiding ~ 
and determining mind at the Table, that is much more 
of a reality and much less of an abstraction. 
v And so it will be found universally that, however 
strongly drawn the supposed disadvantages and hin- 
drances to virtue may be, there is, in every mind, a 
large and positive consciousness of being master of its v 
own choices and responsible for them. A translation 
from Boston to Timbuctoo will not anywise alter the 
pfact. There was never a man, however miseducated, 
| or suppressed by his necessities, or corrupted by bad 
| associations, or misled by base examples, who had not 
'] still his moral convictions, and did not blame himself! 


a 


_/in wrongs commi o firm, and full, and jade] 
structible is this inborn, ral autocracy of the soul, ent 
that, as certainly ‘fibuctoo as in Boston, it takes ~ — 


upon itself the sentence of wrong, and no matter what 
inducements there may have been, no matter how 
brutalized the practices in which it had been trained, 
recognizes still the sovereignty of right, and blames 
itself in every known deviation from it. His judgment 
of what particular things are necessary to fulfill the 
great idea of right may be coarse, and, as we should 
say, mistaken; but he acknowledges, in the deepest 
convictions of his nature, that nothing done against 





aS 


Se 
rat 


44 HENCE ALL GREATNESS 


the eternal, necessary law of right can be justified. 
The fact that his wild nature is so nearly untamable to 
right, or that being or becoming the perfect good he 
thinks, is so far off from his capacity, so nearly impos- 
sible under his executive limitations, is really nothing. 
_/Still he must, and does, condemn the bad liberty 
allowed in every conscious wrong. 
Self-determination, therefore, as respects the mere 
/ will asa power of volition, is essentially indestructible. 
And it is this gift of power, this originative liberty, 
constituting, as it does, the central attribute of all 
personality, that gives us impressions of what is per- 
sonal in character, so different from those which we 
derive from any thing natural. Hence, for example, 
it is that we look on the nobler demonstrations of 
character in man, with a feeling so different from any 
that can be connected with mere cause and effect. In 
every friend we distinguish something more than a 
distillation of natural causes; a free, faithful soul, 
that, having a power to betray, stays fast in the 
integrity of love and sacrifice. We rejoice in heroic 
souls, and in every hero we discover a majestic spirit, 
how far transcending the merely instinctive and neces- 
sary actings of animal and vegetable life. He stands 
out in the flood of the world’s causes, strong in his 
resolve, not knowing, in a just fight, how to yield, but 
protesting, with Coriolanus, — 
Let the Volsces 
Plow Rome and harrow Italy, I’ll never 
Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand, 
As if a man were author of himself, 
And knew no other kin. 


~—Hence the honor we so profusely yield to the martyrs, 
who are God’s heroes; able, as in freedom, to yield 


IN CHARACTER 45 


their flesh up in the fires of testimony, and sing them- 
selves away in the smoke of their consuming bodies. 


Were they a part only of nature, and held to this by 


the law of cause and effect in nature, we Should have 
as much reason to honor their Christian fortitude, as 
we have to honor the cgmbustion of a fire; even that 
which kindled their faggots: —as much and not more. : 
Such is the sense we have of all great character in 
men. We look upon them, not as wheels that are 
turned by natural causes, yielding their natural effects, ¢ 
as the flour is yielded by a mill, but what we call their 
character is the majestic proprium of their personality; 
that which they yield as the fruit of their glorious self- 
hood and immortal liberty. What, otherwise, can 
those triumphal arches mean, arranged for the father 
of his country, now on his way to be inaugurated as its 
First Magistrate? what those processions of women, 
strewing the way with flowers? what the thundering 
shouts of men, seconding their voices by the boom of 
cannon posted on every hill? Why this thrill of emo- 
tion just now running electrically through so many 
millions of hearts toward this single man? It is the 
reverence they feel, and can not fitly express, to personal 
greatness and heroic merit in a great cause. Were 
our Washington conceived in that course of good and 
great action, by which he became the deliverer of his 
country, to be the mere distillation of natural causes, 
who. of us would allow himself to be thrilled with any 
such sentiments of reverence and personal homage? 
It is no mere wheel, no link in a chain, that stirs our 
blood in this manner; but it isa man, the sense we 
have of a man, rising out of the level of things, great’ 
above all things, great as being himself. Here it is, in 
demonstrations like these, that we meet the spontaneous 


46 WE OURSELVES, THEN 


verdict of mankind, apart from all theories, and quib- 
bles, and sophistries of argument, testifying that man 
is a creature out of mere nature —a free cause in him- 
self — great, therefore, in the majesty of great virtues ~ 
and heroic acts. 

The same is true, as we may safely assume, in regard 
to all the other orders and realms of spiritual exis- 
tence ; to angels good and bad, seraphim, principalities, 
and powers in heavenly places. They are all super- 
natural, and it is in them, as belonging to this higher 
class of existences, that God beholds the final causes, 
he uses, and the grand systematizing ideas of his uni- 
ersal plan. Nature, as comprehending the domain of 
cause and effect, is only the platform on which he 
establishes his kingdom as a kingdom of minds, or 
persons, every one of whom has power to act upon it, 
and, to some extent, greater or less, to be sovereign 
over it. So that, after all which has been done by the 
sensuous littleness, the shallow pride, and the idolatry 
of science, to make a total universe, or even a God, of 
nature, still it is nothing but the carpet on which we 
children have our play, and which we may only use 
according to its design, or may cut, and burn, and tear 
at will. The true system of God centers still in us, 
' and not in it; in our management, our final glory and 
_ completeness of being as persons, not in the set figures 

of the carpet we so eagerly admire and call it science 

to ravel. 


an 


Finding, now, in this manner, that we ourselves are 
supernatural creatures, and that the supernatural, in- 
stead of being some distant, ghostly affair, is familiar 
to us as our own most familiar action; also, that 
nature, as a realm of cause and effect, is made to be 


ARE SUPERNATURAL AGENTS 47 


acted on from without by us and all moral beings — 
thus to be the environment of our life, the instrument 
of our activity, the medium of our right or wrong 
doing toward each other, and so the school of our trial 
—a further question rises; viz., what shall we think) 
of God’s relations to nature? If it be nothing incredi- 
ble that we should act on the chain of cause and effect 
in nature, is it more incredible that God should thus 
act? Strange as it may seem, this is the grand offense 
of supernaturalism, the supposing that God can act on 
nature from without; on the chain of cause and effect 
in nature from without the chain of connection, by which -, 
natural consequences are propagated —exactly that ~ 
which we ourselves are doing as the most familiar thing 
in our lives!1 It involves, too, as we can see at a 
| glance, and shall hereafter show more fully, no disrup- 
tion, by us, of the laws of nature, but only a new com- 
bination of its elements and forces, and need not any 
more involve such a disruption by him. Nor can any 
one show that a miracle of Christ, the raising, for, 
example, of Lazarus, involves any thing more than that 
nature is prepared to be acted on by a divine power,’ 
just as it is to be acted on by a human, in the making, 
of gunpowder, or the making and charging of a fire- 
arm. For, though there seems to be an immense dif- 
ference in the grade of the results accomplished, it is 
only a difference which ought to appear, regarding the 
grade of the two agents by whom they are wrought. 
How different the power of two men, creatures though 
they be of the same order; a Newton, for example, a 
Watt, a Fulton ; and some wild Patagonian or stunted 
Esquimau. So, if there be angels, seraphim, thrones, 
dominions, all in ascending scales of endowment above 


1 Note, p. 51, 


48 SO ALSO IS GOD, 


one another, they will, of course, have powers super- 
natural, or capacities to act on the lines of causes in 
nature that correspond with their natural quantity and 
degree. What wonder, then, is it, in the case of Jesus 
Christ, that he reveals a power over nature, appropriate 
to the scale of his being and the inherent supremacy of 
his divine person. 
And yet, it will not do, our philosophers tell us, to 
admit any such thing as a miracle, or that any thing 
does, or can, take place by a divine power, which na- 
ture itself does not bring to pass! God, in other 
words, can not be supposed to act on the line of cause 
and effect in nature; for nature is the universe, and 
the law of universal order makes a perfect system. 
Hence a great many of our naturalists, who admit the 
existence of God, and do not mean to identify his sub- 
stance with nature, and call him the Creator, and honor 
him, at least in words, as the Governor of all things, 
do yet insist that it must be unphilosophical to suppose 
any present action of God, save what is acted in and 
through the preordained system of nature. The author 
of the Vestiges of Creation, for example, (p.118,) looks 
on cause and effect as being the eternal will of God, 
‘and nature as the all-comprehensive order of his Provi- 
dence, beside which, or apart from which, he does, and 
can be supposed to do, nothing. A great many who 
call themselves Christian believers, really hold the 
same thing, and can suffer nothing different. Nature, 
to such, includes man. God and nature, then, are the 
all of existence, and there is no acting of God upon 
nature; for that would be supernaturalism. He may 
be the originative source of nature; he may even be — 
the immediate, all-impelling will, of which cause and 
effect are the symptoms; that is, he may have made, and 


OTHERWISE A NULLITY, 49 


may actuate the machine in that fated, foredoomed way 
which cause and effect describes, but he must not act 
upon the machine-system outside of the foredoomed 
way ; if he does, he will disturb the immutable laws ! 
In fact, he has no liberty of doing any thing, but just 
to keep agoing the everlasting trundle of the machine. 
He can not even act upon his works, save as giving and 
‘ maintaining the natural law of his works; which law 
is a limit upon him, as truly as a bond of order upon 
them. He is incrusted and shut in by his own ordi- 
nances. Nature is the god above God, and he can not 
cross her confines. His ends are all in nature; for, 
outside of nature, and beyond, there is nothing but 
himself. He is only a great mechanic, who has made 
a great machine for the sake of the machine, having 
his work all done long ages ago. Moral government 
is out of the question — there is no government but the 
predestined rolling of the machine. If a man sins, the 
sin is only the play of cause and effect; that is, of 
the machine. If he repents, the same is true — sin, 
repentance, love, hope, joy, are all developments of 
cause and effect; that is, of the machine. If a soul 
gives itself to God in love, the love is but a grinding- 
out of some wheel he has set turning, or it may be 
turns, in the scheme of nature. If I look up to him 
and call him Father, he can only pity the conceit of 
my filial feeling, knowing that it is attributable to 
nothing but the run of mere necessary cause and effect 
in me, and is no more, in fact, from me, than the 
rising of a mist or cloud is from some buoyant free- 
dom in its particles. If I look up to him for help and 
deliverance, he can only hand me over to cause and 
effect of which I am a link myself and bid me stay in 
my place to be what I am made to be. He can touch 


2 


| 


\ 


50 A BEING ENTOMBED 


me by no extension of sympathy, and I must even 
break through nature (as he himself can not) to 
obtain a look of recognition. 

How miserable a desert is existence, both to him 
and to us, under such conditions —to him, because of 
his character ; to us, because of our wants. To be 
thus entombed in his works, to have no scope for his 
virtues, no field for his perfections, no ends to seek, no 
liberty to act, save in the mechanical way of mere cau- 
sality — what could more effectually turn his goodness 
into a well-spring of baffled desires and defeated sym- 
pathies, and make his kingship itself a burden of 
sorrow? Meantime the supposition is, to us, a mockery, 
against which all our deepest wants and highest per- 
sonal affinities are raised up, as it were, in mutinous 
protest. If there is nothing but God and nature, and 
God himself has no relations to nature, save just to 
fill it and keep it on its way, then, being ourselves a 
part of nature, we are only a link, each one, in a chain 
let down into a well, where nothing else can ever touch 
us but the next link above! O, itis horrible! Oursoul 
freezes at the thought! We want, we must have, some- 
thing better —a social footing, a personal, and free, and 
flexible, and conscious relation with our God; that he 
should cross over to us, or bring us over the dark Styx 
of nature unto himself, to love him, to obtain his recogni- 
tion, to receive his manifestation, to walk in his guidance, 
and be raised to that higher footing of social understand- 
ing and spiritual concourse with him, where our in- 
(| born affinities find their center and rest. And what we 
earnestly want, we know that we shall assuredly find. 
The prophecy is in us, and whether we call ourselves 
prophets or not, we shall certainly go on to publish it. 
It is the inevitable, first fact of natural conviction with 


IN HIS WORKS 51 


us. Do we not know, each one, that he is more than a 
thing or a wheel, and, being consciously a man, a spirit, 
a creature supernatural, will he hesitate to claim a place 
with such, and claim for such a place? 


1 It has been objected that the argument of my treatise is nugatory, 
because it does not meet the particular question of creatorship, or the 
supernatural origin of the world. And it does not show, as I readily 
grant, that the atomic forces of the world have not themselves organ- 
ized and kept in progressive development the general system of nature. 
But it certainly does make room for the coexistence of God with 
nature from eternity, in a relation side by side with it, of supernatural 
agency and control. There is nothing incompatible, in other words, 
between the two ideas, God in supreme working and nature in com- 
plete orderly subjection to his will. Then, having reached this point, 
and found that all the difficulties in the way of a supernatural suprem- 
acy over nature are already surmounted, we have scarcely a stage 
farther to go, when we assume that the said supernatural supremacy 
itself supposes the fact of a supernatural creatorship, for in that only 
could it have begun. 

It is very true that the argument instituted does not join issue with 
the pretended self-development of nature, as it is now suggested and 
taught by a certain school of science. That would have carried me 
off into a different field, where all that I am here proposing to gain 
would be virtually renounced. To require it was to require a wholly 
different treatise. 


CHAPTER III 


NATURE IS NOT THE SYSTEM OF GOD.— THINGS AND 
POWERS, HOW RELATED 


Gop is expressed but not measured by his works; 
least of all, by the substances and laws included under 
the general term, nature. And yet, how liable are we, 
overpowered, as we often are, and oppressed by the 
magnitudes of nature, to suffer the impression that 
there can be nothing separate and superior, beyond 
nature. The eager mind of science, for example, sally- 
ing forth on excursions of thought into the vast abysses 
of worlds, discovering tracks of light that must have 
been shooting downward and away from their sources,’ 
even for millions of ages, to have now arrived at their 
mark; and then discovering also that, by such a reach 
of computation, it has not penetrated to the center, 
but only reached the margin or outmost shore of the 
vast fire-ocean, whose particles are astronomic worlds, 
falls back spent, and, having, as it were, no spring left 

for another trial, or the endeavor of a stronger flight, 
surrenders, overmastered and helpless, crushed into 
silence. At such an hour it is any thing but a wonder 
that nature is taken for the all, the veritable system 
of God; beyond which, or collateral with which, there 
is nothing. For so long a time is science imposed 
upon by nature, not instructed by it; as if there could 
be nothing greater than distance, measure, quantity, 
and show, nothing higher than the formal platitude 
52 


\? 


NATURAL MAGNITUDES OPPRESSIVE 53 


of things. But the healthy, living mind will, sooner 
or later, recover itself. It will spring up out of this 
prostration before nature, to imagine other things, 
which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor science 
computed. It will discover fires, even in itself, that 
flame above the stars. It will break over and through 
the narrow confines of stellar organization, to conceive 
a spiritual Kosmos, or divine system, which contains, 
and uses, and is only shadowed in the faintest manner 
by, the prodigious trivialities of external substance. 
Indeed, I think all minds unsophisticated by science, 
or not disempowered by external magnitudes, will con- 
ceive God as a being whose fundamental plan, whose 
purpose, end, and system are nowise measured by that 
which lies in dimension, even though the dimensions 
be measureless. They will say with Zophar still, — 
“The measure thereof is longer than the earth and 
broader than the sea.” And the real, proper universe 
of God, that which is to God the final cause of all 
things, will be to them a realm so far transcending the 
outward immensity, both in quantity and kind, that 
this latter will be scarcely more than some outer gate 
of approach, or eyelet of observation. 

What I propose, then, in the present chapter, coinci- 
dently with the strain of remark here indulged, is to 
undertake a negative, showing (what, in fact, is decisive 
upon the whole question, ) that the surrender of so many 
minds to nature and her magnitudes is premature and 
weak; that nature plainly is not, and can not be, the 
proper and complete system of God; or, if we speak 
no more of God, of the universe. 


It would seem that any really thoughtful person, 
when about to surrender himself to nature, in the 


54 HUMAN NATURE CRAVES 


manner just described, must be detained by a simple 
glance at the manifest yearning of the human race, in 
all ages and nations, for something supernatural. Their 
affinity for objects supernatural is far more evident, as 
_a matter of history, than for objects scientific and 
natural. Instead of reducing their gods and religions 
to the terms of nature, they have peopled nature with 
gods, and turned even their agriculture into a concert, 
or concurrence, with the unseen powers and their min- 
istries. Witness, in this view, the immense array of 
mythologic and formally unrational religions, extinct 
or still existing, that have been accepted by the popu- 
lations of the world. Notice in particular also, that, 
when the keen dialectics of the polished Greeks and 
Romans had cut away the foundations of their religions, 
instead of lapsing into the cold no-religion of the 
Sophists, the cultivated mind of their scholars and 
philosophers passed straight on by the dialectics, to 
lay hold of Christianity ; and Christianity, more rational 
but in no degree less supernatural than the religions 
overturned, was accepted as the common faith. And 
what is not less remarkable, Christianity itself, as if 
not supernatural enough, was corrupted by the addi- 
tion of still new wonders pertaining to the virgin, the 
priesthood, the sacraments, and even the bones of the 
saints; indicated all, and some of them (such as that 
Mary is the Mother of God) generated even, by 
dialectic processes. And so it ever has been. Men 
can as well subsist in a vacuum, or on a mere metallic 
earth, attended by no vegetable or animal products, 
as they can stay content with mere cause and effect, 
and the endless cycle of nature. They may drive 
themselves into it, for the moment, by their specula- 
tions; but the desert is too dry, and the air too thin— 


A SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 55 


they can not stay. Accordingly, we find that just 
now, when the propensities to mere naturalism are so 
manifold and eager, they are yet instigated in their 
eagerness itself by an impulse that scorns all the 
boundaries of mere knowledge and reason; that is, 
by an appetite for things of faith, or a hope of yet 
fresher miracles and greater mysteries— gazing after 
the Boreal crown of Fourier, and the thawing out of 
the poles under the heat of so great felicity to come; 
or watching at the gate of some third heaven to be 
opened by the magnetic passes, or the solemn incanta- 
tions of the magic circles; expecting an irruption of 
demons, in the name of science, more fantastic than 
even that which plagued the world in the days of 
Christ, and which so many critics, in the name also of 
science, were just now laboring most intently to weed 
out of the gospel history. True, the magnetic revela- 
tions are said to be in the way of nature; no matter 
for that, if only they are wonderful enough; all the 
better, indeed, if they give us things supernatural to 
enjoy and live in, without the name. Only we must 
have mysteries, and believe, and take wings, and fly 
clear of the dull level of comprehensible cause and 
substance, somehow. Such is man, such are we all. 

We are like the poet Shelley, who, after he had sunk 
into blank atheism, as regards religion, could not stay 
content, but began forthwith to people his brain and the 
world with griffins, and gorgons, and animated rings, 
and fiery serpents, and spirits of water and wind, and 
became, in fact, the most mythologic of all modern 
poets ; only that he made his mythologic machinery 
himself, out of the delirious shapes exhaled from the 
deep atheistic hunger of his soul. And the new Mor- 
mon faith, or fanaticism, that strangest phenomenon of 


56 SHELLEY’S MYTHOLOGY 


our times — what is it, in fact, but a breaking loose by 
the human soul, pressed down by ignorance and unbelief 
together, to find some element of miracle and mystery, 
in which it may range and feed its insatiable appetite ; 
a raw and truculent imposture of supernaturalism, dug 
up out of the earth but yesterday, which, just because 
it is not under reason and is held by no stays of opinion, 
kindles the fires of the soul’s eternity to a pitch of 
fierceness and a really devastating energy. And were 
the existing faith of powers unseen and worlds above 
the range of science blotted out, leaving us shut down 
under atheism, or mere nature, and gasping in the dull 
vacuum it makes, I verily believe that we should 
instantly begin to burst up all into Mormonism, or 
some other newly invented faith, no better authenticated. 

Into this same gasping state, in fact, we are thrown 
by our new school of naturalistic literature, and we can 
easily distinguish, in the conscious discontent that 
nullifies both our pleasure and praise, the fact of some 
transcendent, inborn affinity, by which we are linked 
to things above the range of mere nature. Who is a 
finer master of English than Mr. Emerson? Who 
offers fresher thoughts, in shapes of beauty more 
fascinating ? Intoxicated by his brilliant creations, the 
reader thinks, for the time, that he is getting inspired. 
And yet, when he has closed the essay or the volume, 
he is surprised to find — who has ever failed to notice 
it?—that he is disabled instead, disempowered, re- 
duced in tone. He has no great thought or purpose in 
him ; and the force or capacity for it seems to be gone. 
Surely, it is a wonderfully clear atmosphere that he is 
in, and yet it is somehow mephitic ! How could it be 
otherwise? As it is a first principle that water will 
not rise above its own level, what better reason is there 


EMERSON’S BRAMINISM 57 


to expect that a creed which disowns duty and turns 
achievement into a conceit of destiny, will bring to 
man those great thoughts, and breathe upon him in 
those gales of impulse, which are necessary to the 
empowered state, whether of thought or of action ? 
|Grazing in the field of nature is not enough for a being 
whose deepest affinities lay hold of the supernatural, 
and reach after God. Airy and beautiful the field may 
be, shown by so great a master; full of goodly pros- 
pects and fascinating images; but, without a living 
God, and objects of faith, and terms of duty, it is a 
pasture only —nothing more. Hence the unreadiness, 
the almost aching incapacity felt to undertake any 
thing or become any thing, by one who has taken 
lessons at this school. Nature is the all, and nature 
will do every thing, whether we will or no. Call it 
duty, greatness, heroism, still it is hers, and she will 
have more of it when she pleases. If, then, nature does 
not set him on also, and do all in him, there is an end ; 
what can he expect to doin the name of duty, faith, 
sacrifice, and high resolve, when nature is not in the 
plan? What better, indeed, is there left him, or more 
efficient, than just to think beautiful thoughts, if he 
can, and surrender himself to the luxury of watching 
the play of his own reflective egoism? Given Brama 
for a god and a religion, what is left us more certainly 
than that we ourselves become Asiatics? Such kind of 
influence would turn the race to pismires, if only we 
could stay content in it, as happily we can not; for, if 


- we chance to find our pleasure in it for an hour, a doom 


as strong as eternity in us compels us finally to spurn 
it, as a brilliant inanity. 

But we are going further with our point than we 
intended. Admitting the universal tendency of the 


58 THE HOST IN OPPOSITION 


race, in past ages, to a faith in things supernatural, it 
may be imagined by some that, as we advance in cul- 
ture, we must finally reach a stage, where reason will 
enforce a different demand; they may even return 
upon us the list we gave, in our introductory chapter, 
of the parties now conspiring the overthrow of a super- 
natural faith, requiring us to accept them as proofs that 
the more advanced stage of culture is now about to be 
reached. In that case, it is enough to answer that the 
naturalizing habit of our times is clearly no indication 
of any such new stage of advancement, but only a phase 
of social tendency once before displayed in the negative 
and destructive era of the Greek and Roman religions ; 
also that the grand conspiracy, exhibited in our own 
time, signifies much less than it would, if, after all, 
there were any real agreement among the parties. 
Thus it will be found that, while they seem to agree in 
the assumption that nature includes every thing, and 
also to show by their imposing air of concert that in 
this way the world must needs gravitate, there is yet, 
if we scan them more carefully, no such agreement as 
indicates any solid merit in their opinion, or even such 
as may properly entitle them to respect. 

Thus we find, first of all, a threefold distribution 
among them that sets them in as many schools, or tiers, 
between which there is almost nothing in common ; one 
section or school maintaining that nature is God, another 
that it is originally the work of God, and a third that 
there isno God. If nature itself is God, then plainly God 
is not the Creator of nature by his own sovereign act ; 
and if there is no God, then he is neither nature nor its 
Creator. Their agreement, therefore, includes nothing 
but a point of denial respecting the supernatural main- 
tained for wholly opposite and contradictory reasons. 


ALSO CONTRADICT EACH OTHER 89 


So, as regards religion itself; to some it is a natural 
effect or growth in souls, and in that view a fact that 
evinces the real sublimity of nature ; while to others it is 
itself a matter only of contempt, acreation of priestly arti- 
fice, or an excrescence of blind superstition. One, again, 
believes in the personality, responsibility, and immor- 
tality of souls, finding a moral government in nature, 
and even what he calls a gospel ; another, that man is a 
mere link in the chain of causalities, like the insects, 
responsibility a fiction, eternity a fond illusion ; and 
still another that, being a mere link in the chain of 
causalities, he will yet forever be, and be happy in the 
consciousness that he is. The contrarieties, in short, 
are endless, and accordingly the weight of their appar- 
ent concert, when set against the general vote and 
appetite of the race for something supernatural, is 
wholly insignificant. If it be a token of advancing 
culture, it certainly is not any token that a wiser age 
of reason or scientific understanding is yet reached ; 
and the grand major vote of the race, for a supernatural 
faith, is nowise weakened by it. Still it is a fact, the 
universal fact of history, that man is a creature of faith, ( 
and can not rest in mere nature and natural causality. | 
Nothing will content him in the faith that nature is the 
all, or universal system of being. 


But the indications we discover within the realm of 
nature, or of cause and effect, are more striking even 
than those which we discover in the demonstrations of 
our own history. We have spoken of a system super- 
natural, superior to the system of nature, and subordinat- 
ing always the latter to itself; understanding, however, 
that both together, in the truest and most proper sense, 
constitute the real universal system of God. Now, as 


60 NATURE ITSELF OFFERS TYPES 


if to show us the possibility, and familiarize to us the 
fact of a subordination thus of one system and its laws 
to the uses and superior behests of another, we have, in 
the domain of nature herself, two grand systems of 
chemistry, or chemical force and action; one of which 
comes down upon the other, always from without, to 
dominate over it, decomposing substances which the 
other has composed, producing substances which the 
other could not. We speak here, it will be understood, 
of what is called inorganic chemistry, and vital chemis- 
try, the chemistry of matter out of life or below it, and 
of that which is in it and by it. The lives that con- 
struct and organize the bodies they inhabit, are the 
highest forms of nature, and are set in nature as types 
of a yet higher order of existence; viz., spirit, or free in- 
telligence. They are immaterial, having neither weight 
nor dimensions of their own; and what is yet closer to 
mind, they act by no dynamic force, or impulsion, but 
from themselves; coming down upon matter, as archi- 
tects and chemists, to do their own will, as it were, upon 
the raw matter and the dead chemistry of the world. 
We say not that they have in truth a will; they only 
have a certain plastic instinct, by which their dominat- 
ing chemistry is actuated, and their architectural forms 
are supplied. We have thus a world immaterial within 
the boundaries of cause and effect ; for the plastic instinct 
has causes of action in itself, and acts under a necessity 
as absolute as the inorganic forces. It belongs to nature, 
and not to the supernatural, because it is really in the 
chain of cause and effect, and is only a quast power. 
The manner of working, in these plastic chemistries, no 
science can discover and their products no science can 
imitate. Elements that are united by the laws of matter 
they will somehow resolve and separate, and elements 


OF SUPERNATURAL AGENCY 61 


which no laws of matter have ever united, they will 
bring into a mystic union, congenial to their own forms 
and uses. Thus, in place of the few distinct substances 
we should have, were the earth left to its pure metallic 
state, invaded by none of these myrmidons of life and 
the chemistries they bring with them, we have, pro- 
vided for our use, immense varieties of substances 
which can not even be recounted — woods, meats, 
bones, oils, wools, furs, grains, gums, spices, sweets, 
the fruits, the medicines, the grasses, the flowers, the 
odors — representatives all of so many lives, working 
in the clay, to produce what none but their external 
chemistry, entering into the clay in silent sovereignty, 
can summon it to yield. They are types in nature of 
the supernatural and its power to subordinate the laws 
of nature. They come as God’s mute prophets, throw- 
ing down their rods upon the ground, as Moses did, 
that we may see their quickening and believe. We do 
believe that they contain a higher tier of chemical forces, 
superior to the lower tier of forces in the dead matter, 
and we are nowise shocked by the miracle, when we see | 
them quicken the dead matter into life, and work it by | 
their magic power into substances, whose affinities were 
not inherent in the matter, but in the subtle chemists 
of vitality by whom they were fashioned. 

Nothing is better understood, for example, than that 
the three elements of the sugar principle have no discoy- 
erable affinity by which they unite, and that no utmost 
_ art of science has ever been able, under the inorganic 
laws of matter, to unite them. They never do unite, 
save by the imposed chemistry of the sugar-making 
lives. And so it is of all vegetable and animal sub- 
stances. They exist because the system of vital chem- 


istries is gifted with a qualified sovereignty over - eae 


62 AS DR. STRAUSS HIMSELF 


system of inorganic chemistry. And it would seem as 
if it was the special design of God, in this triumph of 
the lives over the mineral order and its laws, to accustom 
us to the fact of a subordination of causes, and make us 
so familiar with it as to start no skepticism in us, when 
the sublimer fact of a supernatural agency in the affairs 
of the world is discovered or revealed. For, if the 
secret workings, the dissolvings, distillations, absorp- 
tions, conversions, compositions, continually going on 
about us and within, could be definitely shown, there 
is not any thing in all the mythologies of the race, the 
doings of the gods, the tricks of fairies, the spells and 
transformations of the wizard powers, that can even 
approach the real wonders of fact here displayed. 
And yet we apprehend no breach or suspension of the 
laws of dead matter in the manifest subordination they 
suffer; on the contrary, we suppose that the dead mat- 
ter is thus subordinated, in a certain sense, through and 
by its own laws. As little reason have we to appre- 
hend a breach upon the laws of nature in one of Christ’s 
miracles. Whatever yields to him, yields by its own 
laws, and not otherwise. So significant is the lesson 
given us by these myrmidons of life, that are filling the 
world with their activity, preparing it to their uses, and 
transforming it — otherwise a desert —into a frame of 
habitable order and beauty. 

It is remarkable that even Dr. Strauss takes note of 
this same peculiarity observable in the works of nature. 
“Tt is true,” he says, “that single facts and groups of 
facts, with their conditions and processes of change, are 
not so circumscribed as to be unsusceptible of external 
influence; for the action of one existence or kingdom 
in nature trenches on that of another; human freedom 
controls natural development, and material laws react 


CANDIDLY ADMITS 63 


on human freedom. Nevertheless, the totality of finite 
things forms a vast circle, which, except that it owes 
its existence and laws to a superior power, suffers no 
intrusion from without. This conviction is so much a 
habit of thought with the modern world, that in actual 
life the belief in a supernatural manifestation, an im- 
mediate divine agency, is at once attributed to ignorance 
or imposture.”! But, what if it should happen that 
above this “ totality of things” there is a grand totality 
superior to things? Wherein is it more incredible that 
this higher totality should exert a subordinating “ ex- 
ternal influence” on the whole of things, than that 
“one kingdom in nature trenches on another”? Why 
may not men, angels, God, subordinate and act upon 
the whole of what is properly called nature? and what 
are all the organific powers in nature doing but giving 
us a type of the truth, to make it familiar? And then 
how little avails the really low appeal from such a tes- 
timony to the current unbeliefs and crudities of a super- 
ficial, coarse-minded, unthinking world! It is not these 
which can convict such opinions of “ignorance or im- 
posture.” Had this writer, on the contrary, observed 
that the subordination of one kingdom of nature and 
its laws to the action of another, covers all the difficul- 
ties of the question of miracles, he could have had 
some better title to the name of a philosopher. 
Meantime, while we are familiarized, in this manner, 
with the subordination of one system of laws and 
forces to another; and prepared to admit the possi- 
bility, if we should not rather say forewarned of the 
actual existence of, another system above nature sub- 
ordinating that; we also meet with arguments incor- 
porated in the works of nature, that have a sturdier 


1 Life of Jesus, Vol. L, p. 71. 


64 GEOLOGY FURNISHES 


significance, rising up, as it were, to confront those 
coarse and truculent forms of skepticism on which, 
probably, the finer tokens just referred to would be 
lost. The atheist denies the existence of any being or 
power above nature; the pantheist does the same — 
only adding that nature is God, and entitled in some 
sense to the honor of religion. Now, to show the 
existence of a God supernatural, a God so far sepa- 
rated from nature and superior to it as to act on the 
chain of natural cause and effect from without the 
chain, the new science of geology comes forward, lays 
open her stone registers, and points us to the very 
tines and places where the creative hand of God was 
inserted into the world, to people it with creatures of 
life. Thus it is an accepted or established fact in 
geology, that our planet was, at some remote period, 
in a molten or fluid state, by reason of the intense heat 
of its matter. Emerging from this state by a gradual 
cooling process, there could of course be no seeds in it 
and no vestiges or germs of animal life. It is only a 
vast cinder, in fact, just now a little cooled on the 
surface, but still red hot within. And yet the registers 
show, beyond the possibility even of a doubt, that the 
cinder was, in due time and somehow, peopled with 
creatures of life. Whence came they or the germs of. 
which they sprung? Out of the fire, or out of the 
cinder? The fire would exterminate them all in a 
minute of time, and it will be difficult to imagine that 
the cinder, the mere metallic matter of the world, has 
ny power to resolve itself, under its material laws, 
nto reproductive and articulated forms of life. 
Again, these ancient registers of rock record the fact 
that, here and there, some vast fiery cataclysm broke 
loose, submerging and exterminating a great part of the 
















ANOTHER KIND OF PROOF 65 


living tribes of the world, after which came forth new 
races of occupants, more numerous and many of them 
higher and more perfect in their forms of organization. 
Whence came these? By what power ever discovered 
in nature were they invented, composed, articulated, and 
set breathing in the air and darting through the waters 
of the world? 

Finally man appears, last and most perfect of all the 
living forms; for, while so many successive orders and 
types of living creatures, vegetable and animal, show us 
their remains in the grand museum of the rocks, no ves- 
tige, or bone, or sign of man has ever yet been discovered 
there. Therefore here, again, the question returns, 
whence came the lordly occupant? Where was he con- 
ceived? In what alembic of nature was he distilled? 
By what conjunction of material causes was he raised up 
to look before and after, and be the investigator of all 
causes ? 

Having now these facts of new production before us, 
we are obliged to admit some power out of nature and 
above it, which, by acting on the course of nature, 
started the new forms of organized life, or fashioned the 
germs out of which they sprung. To enter on a formal 
discussion of the theory, so ambitiously attempted by 
some of the naturalists, by which they are ascribed to 
the laws of mere nature or to natural development, 
would carry me farther into the polemics of geology 
and zodlogy than the limits of my present argument will 
suffer. I will only notice two or three of the principal 
points of this development theory, in which it is opposed 
by insurmountable facts.! 

1 Whoever wishes to see this subject handled more scientifically 


and in a most masterly manner, may consult the ‘‘ Essay on Classifi- 
- gation,’’ prefixed tothe great work of Mr. Agassiz on Natural History, 


66 IT REFUTES 


First of all, it requires us to believe that the original 
germs of organic life may be and were developed out of 
matter by its inorganic forces. If so, why are no new 
germs developed now? and why have we no well-attested 
facts of the kind? Some few pretended facts we have, 
but they are too loosely made out to be entitled, for a 
moment, to our serious belief. Never yet has it been 
shown that any one germ of vegetable, or animal life, 
has been developed by the existing laws of nature, with- 
out some egg or germ previously supplied to start the 
process. Besides, it is inconceivable that there is a 
power in the metallic and earthy substances, or atoms, 
however cunningly assisted by electricity, to generate a 
seed or egg. If we ourselves can not even so much as 
cast a bullet without a mold, how can these dead atoms 
and blind electric currents, without any matrix, or even 
governing type, weave the filaments and cast the living 
shape of an acorn, or any smallest seed? There can be no 
softer credulity than the skepticism which, to escape the 
need of a creative miracle, resorts to such a faith as this. 

But, supposing it possible, or credible, that certain 
germs of life may have been generated by the inorganic 
forces, the development scheme has it still on hand to 
account for the existence of man. That he is thus com- 
posed in full size and maturity is impossible; he must 
be produced, if at all, in the state of infancy. Two 
suppositions, then, are possible, and only two; and we 
find the speculations of the school vibrating apparently 
between them. First, that there is a slow process of 
advance in order, through which the lowest forms of 


where the conceit that our animal and vegetable races were started in 
their several eras by physical agencies, without a creative Intelligence, 
is exploded so as to be forever incapable of resuming even a pretense 
of reason, 


THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY 67 


life gradually develop those which are higher and more 
perfect, and finally culminate in man. Or, secondly, 
that there is a power in all vital natures, by which, at 
distant but proper intervals, they suddenly produce some 
order of being higher than they, much as we often see 
in those examples of propagation which we denominate, 
most unphilosophically, /usus nature, and that so, as the 
last and highest /wsus, if that were a scientific conception, 
man appears; being, in fact, the crown, or complete ful- 
fillment, of that type of perfection which pertains to all, 
even the lowest, forms of life. In one view the progress 

is a regular gradation; in the other it is a progress by 
leaps or stages. 

As regards the former, it is a fatal objection that no 
such plastic, gradual movement of progress can be traced 
in the records of the geologic eras. All the orders, and 
genera, and species, maintain their immovable distinc- 
tions ; and no trace can any where be discovered, whether 
there or in the now living races, of organic forms that 
are intermediate and transitional. Tokens may be traced 
in the rocks of a transitional development in some given 
kind or species, as of the gradual process by which a 
frog is developed; but there is no trace of organized 
being midway between the frog and the horse, or of any 
insect or fish, on its way to become a frog. Besides, it 
is wholly inconceivable that there should be in rerum 
natura any kind of creature that is midway, or transi- 
tional, between the oviparous and mammal orders. Still 
further, if man is the terminal of a slow and plastic 
movement, or advance, what has become of the forms 
next to man, just a little short of man? They are not 
among the living, nor among the dead. No trace of 
any such forms has ever been discovered by science. 
The monkey race have been set up as candidates for this 


bee tn hea. 4m vi 


68 IT REFUTES 


honor. But, to say nothing of the degraded conscious- 
ness that can allow any creature of language, duty, and 
reason, to speak of his near affinity with these creatures, 
what one of them is there that could ever raise a human 
infant? And if none, there ought to be some inter- 
mediate race, yet closer to humanity, that can do it. 
Where is this intermediate race ? 

Just this, too, is the difficulty we encounter in the 
second form of the theory. There neither is nor can be 
any middle position between humanity and no humanity. 
If the child, for child there must be, is human, the 
mother and father must either be human or else mere 
animals. If they have not merely the power of using 
means to ends, but the necessary ideas, truth, right, 
cause, space, time, and also the faculty of language, 


‘that is of receiving the inner sense of symbols, which is 


the infallible test of intelligence, [intus lego, | then they 
are human; otherwise they are animals. No matter, 
then, how high they may be in their order; their human 
child is a different form of being, with which, in one 
view, they have nothing in common. And he is, by the 
supposition, born a child; the son of an animal, but yet 
a human child. And then the question rises, what 
animal is there, existing or conceivable, what accident, 
or power in nature, that can nurse or shelter from death, 
that feeblest and most helpless of all creatures, a human 
infant? Neither do we find, as a matter of fact, that 
the animal races advance in their nursing and protect- 
ing capacity, accordingly as they advance in the scale 
of organization. The nearest approach to that kind of 
tending and protective capacity, necessary to the raising 
of a human infant, any where discernible in the animal 
races, is found in the marsupial animals; which are yet 
far inferior, as regards both intelligence and organiza- 


z THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY 69 


tion, to the races of dogs, elephants, and monkeys. Nay, 
the young salmon, hatched in the motherhood of the 
river, being cradled in the soft waters, and having a 
small sack of food attached underneath, to support the 
first weeks of their infancy, are much better off in their 
nursing than these most advanced races. Any theory, 
in short, which throws a human child on the care of 
an animal parentage, is too nearly absurd to require 
refutation. 

But there is a scientific reason against this whole 
theory of development, which appears to be irresistible ; 
viz., that it inverts the order of causes, and makes ex- 
actly that which distinguishes the fact of death, the 
author and cause of life. For it is precisely the won- 
der, as was just now shown, of the living creatures, or 
vital powers, that, instead of being under the laws of 
mineral substances, they are continually triumphing 
over them. Never do they fall under and submit to 
them, till they die, and this is death. Thus, when a 
little nodule of living matter, called an acorn, is placed 
in the ground, it takes occasion, so to speak, from its 
new conditions, begins to quicken, opens its ducts, 
starts its pumps into action, sets at work its own won- 
drous powers of chemistry, and labors on through 
whole centuries, composing and building on new 
lengths of wood till it has raised into the sky, against 
gravity and the laws of dead chemistry, a ponderous 
mass of many tons weight, there to stand, waving in 
triumph over the vanquished chemists of the ground, 
and against the raging storms of ages; never to yield 
the victory till the life grows old by exhaustion. Havy- 
ing come now to the limit of its own vital nature, the 
tree dies; whereupon the laws of inorganic matter, 
over which it had triumphed, fall at work upon it, in 


70 IT IS REFUTED TOO R 


their turn, to dissolve it ; and, between them and gray- 
ity, pulling it down upon the ground, it is disintegrated 
and reduced to inorganic dust. Now what the theory in 
question proposes is, that this same living nodule was 
originally developed, organized, and gifted with life, 
by the laws of dead matter, —laws that have them- 
selves been vanquished, .as regards their force, by its 
dominating sovereignty, and never have been able to 
do any thing more than to dissolve it after it was 
dead. 

We are brought, then, to the conclusion, which no 
. ingenuity of man can escape, that the successive races 
of living forms discovered by geology are fresh crea- 
tions, by a power out of nature and above it acting on 
nature ; which, it will be remembered, is our definition 
of supernaturalism itself. And this plainly is no mere 
indication, but an_absolute proof, that nature is not the 
complete system of God. Indeed, we may say, what 
might well enough be clear beforehand, that, if man is 
not from eternity, as geology proves beyond a ques- 
tion, then to imagine that mere dead earth, acted on by 
its chemical and electric forces, should itself originate 
sense, perception, thought, reason, conscience, heroism, 
and genius, is to assert, in the name of science, what is 
more extravagant than all the miracles even of the 
Hindoo mythology. 

There is yet another view of nature, at once closer 
at hand and more familiar, which demands a great deal 
more of attention than it has received, from those who 
include all existence in the term. I speak of the con- 
flicting and mutually destructive elements known to be 
comprised in it. In one view, it appears to be a glo- 
rious and complete system of order; in another, a con- 
fused mixture of tumult and battle. One set of powers 


BY OTHER REASONS val 


is continually destroying what another is, with equal 
persistency, creating ; and the whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth in pain together. If then system is that 
which stands in the unity of reason, by what right are 
we able to call nature a system? That it is a system, 
or more properly part of a system, I do not question ; 
for the subjective unity of reason is an instinct so pow- 
erful in our nature, or so nearly sovereign over it, that 
we can never expel the faith of such unity, even when it 
is objectively undiscoverable. What I here insist upon 
is, that nature, granting the most that can be said of 
it as a system, is manifestly no complete system in it- 
self. On the contrary, it takes on appearances, in all 
its manifestations, that indicate the action in it and 
upon it of powers extraneous. It seems to be no com- 
plete thing in itself, otherwise it would flow in courses 
of order and harmony, without any such turbulence of 
conflict and mutual destruction as we now see. We 
even look upon it as a realm played upon by forces of 
mischief, mixed up somehow with the disorders of dis- 
obedient powers, or, at least, penally accommodated to 
their state of sin, as it was originally subordinated to 
their uses. Most certain it is that, if cause and effect 
are universal, and in that view a complete universal 
system, such as our pantheistic and other naturalizing 
writers pretend, — subject to no outside action, subor- 
dinate to no other and higher tiers of existence, — 
there could be no aspects of strife and tumult in the 
plan ; all, in such a case, must represent the necessary 
harmony and order of the system ; flowing together on, 
down the easy track of its silent, smooth eternity.. As 
it is, then, we have manifestly no sufficient right to 
speak of system at all, in the proper and true meaning 
of the term, till we bring into the account existences 


—,. 


72 DISTINCTION RAISED 


above nature, such as have it in their way to will, and 
war, and bring in disorder, presupposing thus a plan 
that includes possibilities of strife and conflict. And 
then, when we speak of system, it will be in the sense 
of the apostle, when, passing above the mere platitudes 
of things, he rises, in the manner already described, to 
the contemplation of invisible dominions and powers, 
and of Christ, their everlasting head, and says inclu- 
sively of all created beings in heaven and in earth, — 
“For in him all things consist.” In this word “con- 
sist,” [standing together,] we have the essential and 
highest conception of system. Here is opened a 
glimpse of the true system of God; any thing less, or 
lower, or different, is only a fiction of science, and no 
truth. 


But we come to a point more positive and decisive ; 
viz., that we do positively know existences that can 
not be included in nature, but constitute a higher 
range, empowered to act upon it. This higher range 
we are ourselves, as already shown by our definition of 
nature and the supernatural in the last chapter. By 
that definition we are now prepared to assume and form- 
ally assign the grand twofold distinction of things and 
persons, or things and powers. All free intelligences, _ 
it was shown, the created and the uncreated, are, as 
being free, essentially supernatural in their action ; 
having all, in the matter of their will, a power tran- 
scending cause and effect in nature, by which they are 
able to act on the lines and vary the combinations of 
natural causalities. They differ, in short, from every 
thing that classes under the term nature, in the fact that 
they act from themselves, uncaused in their action. 
They are powers, not things; the radical idea of a 


BETWEEN POWERS AND THINGS 73 


power being that of an agent, or force, which acts from 
itself, uncaused, initiating trains of effect that flow from 
itself. 

Of-the two great classes, therefore, named in our 
distribution, one comprehends all beings that are able to 
originate new trains of effects,— these are the Powers; 
and the other is made up of such as can only propa- 
gate effects under certain fixed laws,— these are Things. 
At the head of one class we conceive is God, as Lord 
of Hosts; who, in virtue of his all-originating power 
as Creator, is called the First Cause; having round 
him innumerable orders of intelligence which, though 
caused to exist by him, are as truly first causes in their 
action as he, —starting all their trains of consequences 
in the same manner. In the other class, we have the 
immense catalogue of what are called the natural 
sciences,—the astronomical bodies, the immaterial 
forces, the fluids and solids of the world, the elements 
and atoms of chemistry, the dynamics of life and 
instinct, — in all of which, what are called causes are 
only propagations of effects under and by fixed laws. 
Hence they are second causes only; that is, causes 
whose causations are determined by others back of 
them ; never, in any sense, originative, or first causes. 
The completeness of the distribution will be yet more 
clear, and the immense abyss of distance between the 
two orders, or classes, more visibly impassable, if we 
add such points of contrast as the following :— 

Powers, acting in liberty, are capable of a double 
action,—to do, or not to do, (God, for example, in 
creating, man in sinning ;) things can act only in one 
way, viz., as their law determines. 

Powers are perfectible only by exercise, after they 
are made ; things are perfect as made. 


74 POWERS ARE 


Powers are perfected, or established in their law, 


only by a schooling of their consent ; things are under . 


a law mechanical at the first, having no consent. 

Powers can violate the present or nearest harmony, 
moving disorder in it ; things are incapable of disorder, 
save as they are disordered by the malign action of 
powers. 

Powers, governed by the absolute force or fiat of 
omnipotence, would in that fact be uncreated and 
cease ; things exist and act only in and by the impul- 
sion of that fiat. 

We have thus drawn out and set before us two 
distinct orders and degrees of being, which, together, 
constitute the real universe. So perfectly diverse are 
they in kind, that no common terms of law or principle 
can, for one moment, be imagined to include them both ; 
they can be one system only insome higher and broader 
sense, which subordinates one to the other, or both to 
the same final causes. One thing is thus made clear ; 
viz., that nature is not, in any proper sense, the 
‘universe. We know that it is not, because we find 

| another kind of existence in ourselves, which consciously 
does not fall within the terms of nature. Probably the 
disciples of naturalism will make answer to this course 
of argument, by complaining that we gain our point thus 
easily by means of our definition, which definition is 
arbitrary, — drawing a distinction between nature and 
the supernatural, or between things and powers, that is 
not usual. Whether it be usual or not is not the 
question, but whether it is grounded in reality and 
witnessed immediately by our own consciousness. If 
it has been the prime sophism of the naturalists, to 
assume the universality of nature, and still more if they 
have carried the assumption so far as to hold, in fact 


yo 


THE PRINCIPAL MAGNITUDES 75 


and even formally, that men are only things, — under 
the same laws of eternal necessity with things, and 
equally incapable of obligation, thus a part of the 
system of universal nature,—we certainly have as 
good a right to raise definitions, that meet the truth 
of consciousness, as they to overlook and hide them, 
in plain defiance of consciousness. There may be some- 
thing exact in such definitions, but there certainly is 
nothing arbitrary. 

Receiving it now as a truth sufficiently established 
that nature, or the realm of things, is not the system of 
the universe, that there is beside a realm of powers, it is 
difficult to close the survey taken, without glancing, for 
a moment, at the relative weight and consequence of 
the two realms. When such a question is raised, there 
are many who will have it as their feeling, whether they 
say it in words or not, that the world of things prepon- 
derates in magnitude ; for what are we doing, a great 
part of us, whether men of action or men of science, but 
chasing the shows of our senses, and magnifying their 
import, by the stimulation of our egregious idolatry? 
And yet it would seem that any most extempore 
glance at the world of powers would suffice to correct 


us, and set the realm of things, vast as it is, in a very \- 


humble place. First, we recognize in the grand in- 
‘ventory our own human race. We call them persons, 
spirits, souls, minds, intelligences, free agents, and we 
see them moving out from nature and above it, con- 
sciously superior; streaming into it in currents of 
causality from themselves; subduing it, developing or 
detecting its secret laws, harnessing its forces, and using 
it as the pliant instrument of their will; first causes all, 
in a sense, and springs of action, side by side with the 
Creator, whose miniatures they are, whose footsteps 


76 NATURE ONLY A FIELD 


they distinguish, and whose recognition they naturally 
aspire to. Next adjacent to these we have the intelli- 
gent powers of the astronomic worlds, and all the out- 
lying populations of the sky; so numerous that we 
shall best conceive their number, not by counting the 
stars and increasing the census obtained by some factor 
or multiplier greater than the mind can definitely grasp, 
but by imagining the stellar spaces of infinity itself 
interfused and filled with their prodigious tides of life 
and motion. All these, like us, are creatures of admi- 
ration, science, will, and duty; able to search out the 
invisible in the visible, and find the footsteps of God in 
his works. Then again, also, we recognize a vast and 
gloriously populated realm of angels and departed 
spirits, who, when they are sent, minister, unseen, about 
us ; mixed, we know not how, in the surroundings of 
our state, with unsaintly and demoniacal powers of mis- 
chief, not sent nor suffered even to come, save when they 
are attracted by the low affinities we offer as open gates 
to their coming. To which, also, we are to add those 
unknown, dimly-imagined orders of intelligences, of 
which we are notified in the terms of revelation, —sera- 
phim, living creatures, thrones, authorities, dominions, 
principalities, and powers. 

Now all these living armies or hosts of God, and God 
the Lord of Hosts, capable of character, society, duty, 
love, — creators all, in a sense, of things that other- 
wise could never be, first causes all of their own acts 
and doings, able to adorn what is and contrive what is 
not, and carry up the worlds themselves in ascending 
scales of improvement,—can we look on these and 
imagine that nature includes the principal sum and con- 
stitutes the real system of being? Are not these other 
forms of being the transcendent forms, and if we will 


FOR THE POWERS, TT 


inventory the universe, arethey not all, in fact, that gives 
it an assignable value? If God himself be a real exist- 
ence, what is he, by the supposition, but the major term 
of all existence, — the all-containing substance, a being 
so great that we scarcely need refer to the free popula- 
tions just named, to sink all that is below him, and is 
called nature, into comparative insignificance? But, 
when we regard him as the Uncreated Power at the 
head of his immense family of powers, all systematized 
or sought to be systematized, all perfect in good or else 
to be perfected under one law, viz., the eternal, neces- 
sary, immutable law of right, —a law which he first of 
all accepts himself, in which his own character of beauty 
and truth and even his felicity is based, and which 
_ therefore he ordains for all, to be the condition of their 
character, as of his own, building nature itself to it, as 
a field of exercise and trial ; then do we, for once, catch 
a true glimpse of the significance of nature. It is no 
more that universe the philosophers speak of ; it is 
raised in dignity by the relation it fills, and, for a like 
reason, sunk in quantity to comparative nothingness. Its 
distances no longer occupy us, its magnitudes appall us 
no more, the astronomic splendors are tinsel; nothing is 
solid, or great, or high, but those transcendent powers 
whose eternities are the main substances of the worlds. 
Nature, in short, is only stage, field, medium, vehicle, for 
the universe ; that is, for God and his powers. These 
are the real magnitudes ; because they contain, at once, 
the import and the final causes, or last ends, of all created 
substance. The grand, universal, invisible system of 
God, therefore, is a system that centralizes itself in these, 
subordinating all mere things, and having them for its 
instruments. For the serving and training of these, he 
loosens the bands of Orion and tempers the sweet influ- 





78 AND THEIR EXERCISE 


ences of Pleiades; spreading out the heavens them- 
selves, not for the heavens’ sakes, but as a tent for these 
to dwell in. Is it anything new that the tent is a 
thing less solid and of meaner consequence than the 
occupant ? 


CHAPTER IV 


PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE, AS RELATED TO THE FACT 
OF EVIL 


WE have reached a summit now, where a wider 
prospect opens, and God’s true system begins to reveal 
its outlines. Nature, intelligently defined, is not,as we 
have seen, that_system, but only a subordinate and 
humble member of it. The principal existences are not 
the things, or magnitudes which science has for its 
subjects, but those everlasting populations of powers 
that inhabit the realm of things and do their will upon 
it. The real universe invests, or takes in nature, even 
as the blooming and succulent peach gathers its fruity 
parts, its fibers, veins, and circulating juices, about 
the nut or stone. Scientifically speaking, both parts 
together constitute the real unity of the peach. But, 
if any one should claim this distinction for the stone, 
because of its stability and because it is a point of 
inherence and a basis of reaction for the vascular and 
fleshy parts, it would be a good and sufficient reply that, 
practically, or as regarding considerations of value, the 
fruity part is all; and that, when we name the peach, 
we commonly do not so much as think of the stone, 
either as being or not being included. So it is with 
cause and effect, laws and instincts, all that we-call 
nature; it is not the system of God, and is really no 
co-ordinate part of his universe, considered as related to 

72 


~ 


80 POWERS NOT MANAGEABLE 


the powers that have their society in it and get their 
reactions from it. They are the universe, practically, 
themselves ; only having nature as their field and the 
tool-house of their instrumentations. 

Regarding them now as powers, and so as the grand 
reality of God’s universal system, let us consider more 
carefully what their relations are to the natural forces 
and the general order of the system. They can not, by 
the supposition, be operated under laws of causation, or 
be, in any sense, included in the order of nature. As 
little admissible is it, supposing the strict originality of 
their actions, and regarding them as properly first 
causes each of his own, that they are subject to any 
direct control, or impulsion of omnipotence. We set 
no limits, when we thus speak, to omnipotence; we 
only say that omnipotence is force, and that nothing in 
the nature of force is applicable to the immediate direc- 
tion, or determination of powers. At a remove one or 
more degrees distant, force may concern itself in the 
adjustment of means, influences, and motivities related 
to choice; or, by spiritual permeations, it may temper 
and sway that side of the soul which is under the con- 
trol of laws, and so may raise motivities of thought and 
feeling within the soul itself; but the will, the man 
himself as a power, is manageable only in a moral way; 
that is, by authority, truth, justice, beauty, that which 
supposes obligation or command. And this, again, 
supposes a consenting obedience, and this a power of 
non-consent, without which the consent were insignifi- 
cant. Which power of non-consent, it will be observed, 
is a power also of deviation or disobedience, and no one 
can show beforehand that, having such a power, the 
subject will not sometime use it. 

So far the possibility of evil appears to be necessarily 


BY OMNIPOTENCE 81 


involved in the existence of a realm of powers; whether 
it shall also be a fact, depends on other considerations 
yet to be named. One of the most valued and most 
triumphantly asserted arguments of our new school of 
Sophists is dismissed, in this manner, at the outset. 
God they say is omnipotent, and, being omnipotent, 
he can, of course, do all things. If therefore he chooses 
to have no sin or disobedience, there will be no sin or 
disobedience; and if we fall on what is sin to us, it will 
only be a form of good to him, and would be also to us, 
it we could see far enough to comprehend the good. 
The argument is well enough, in case men are things 
only and not powers; but if God made them to be 
powers, they are, by the supposition, to act as being 
uncaused in their action, which excludes any control of 
them by God’s omnipotent force, and then what becomes 
of the argument ? Omnipotence may be exerted, as we 
just said, one degree farther off, or in that department 
of the soul which is under conditions of nature; but it 
does not follow that any changes of view, feeling, 
motive, wrought in this manner, will certainly suffice 
to keep any being in the right, when he is so far a 
power that he can even choose the weakest and most 
worthless motive — as we consciously do in every wrong 
act of our lives. 

We dismiss, in the same short manner, the sweeping 
inferences a certain crude-minded class of theologians 
are accustomed to draw from the omnipotence of God. 
They take the word omnipotence in the same undis- 
cerning and coarse way; as if it followed indubitably, 
that a being omnipotent can do every thing he really 
wishes to have done; and then the conclusion is not 
far off that God, for some inscrutable reason, wants 
sin, wants misery — else why do they exist ?— therefore 


82 WHICH IS YET NO LIMITATION 


that the existence of sin and misery supposes no real 
breach of order, and that, when they come, they fall 
‘ into the regular train of God’s ideal harmony, as exactly 
as any of the heavenly motions or chemical attractions. 
All such idolaters of the force principle in .God will, of 
course, be abundantly shocked by what appears to bea - 
limit on the sway, or sufficiency of their idol. And yet, 
even they will be advancing unconsciously, every day 
of their lives, something which implies a limitation as 
real as any they complain of. Thus, how often will 
they say, without suspecting any such implication, that 
God could not forgive sin without a ransom, and could 
not provide a ransom, save by the incarnate life and 
' death of his Son. Why not, if he is omnipotent? Can 
not omnipotence do every thing? This very question, 
indeed, of the seeming limitation of God’s omnipotence, 
implied in the sacrifice of Christ, was the precise diffi- 
culty which Anselm, in his famous treatise, undertook 
to solve. He states it thus: — ‘To show for what 
necessity and cause God, who is omnipotent, should 
have assumed the littleness and weakness of human 
nature, for the sake of its renewal ;”’? or, as he had just 
been saying,? how he did this to restore the world, 
when, for aught that appears, “he might have done it 
merely by his will.” 

The difficulty was real, no doubt, to a certain class of 
minds, in his time; but to another class, inthralled by 
no such crudities in respect to force, it never was, or 
could be, any difficulty at all. As little room for ques- 
tion is there in our doctrine, when we say that a realm 
of powers is not, by the supposition, to be governed as 
arealm of things, that is, by direct omnipotence; for we 
mean by omnipotence, not power, in the sense of influ- 


1 Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. XI., p. 787. 2 Tb., p. 736. 


OF OMNIPOTENCE 83 


ence, or moral impression, but mere executive force ; 
we mean that God, as being omnipotent, is in force to 
do all that force can do — this and nothing more. But 
force has no relation to the doing of many things. It 
can overturn mountains, roll back the sea, or open a 
way through it; but manifestly it has nothing to do 
in the direct impulsion of a soul; for a soul is a power, 
capable of character and responsibility, as being clear of 
all causation and acting by its own free self-impulsion. 
Therefore, to say that powers, or free agents, can not 
be swayed absolutely by omnipotent force, is only to 
deny the applicability of such force, not to place it 
under limitation. It might as well be called a limita- 
tion of the force of an army, to say that it can not 
compute an eclipse, or write an epic; or that of an 
earthquake, to say that it can not shake a demonstration 
of Euclid. 

. The doctrine I am stating involves, in fact, no limi- 
tation of the power of God at all. It only shows that 
the reason of God’s empire excludes, at a certain point, 
the absolute dominion of force. Nor is it any thing 
new, more than in the question of Anselm above re- 
ferred to, that the force of God consents to the sover- 
eignty of his eternal reason, and the counsel of wisdom 
in his purposes. 

But it will be peremptorily required of us, at this 
point, to answer another question; viz., why God 
should have created a realm of powers, or free agents, 
‘if they must needs be capable, in this manner, of wrong 
and misery ? Without acknowledging, for one moment, 
that I am responsible for the answer of any such ques- 
tion, and denying explicity the right of any mortal to 
disallow or discredit any act of God, because he can 
not comprehend the reasons of it, I will simply say, in 


84 IN A KINGDOM OF POWERS, 


reply, that it is enough for me to be allowed the simple 


| hypothesis that God preferred to have powers and not 


things only ; because he loves character and, apart from 
this, cares not for all the mere things that can be piled 
in the infinitude of space itself, even though they be 
diamonds ; because, in bestowing on a creature the 
perilous capacity of character, he bestows the highest 
nobility of being and well-being ; a capacity to know, 
to love, to enjoy, to be consciously great and blessed 
in the participation of, his own divinity and character. 
For if all the orbs of heaven were so many solid Kohi- 
noors, glittering eternally in the sun, what were they, 
either to themselves or to him; or, if they should roll 
eternally, undisturbed in the balance of their attrac- 
tions, what were they to each other? Is it any im- 


_peachment of God that he did not care to reign over an 
empire of stones? If he has deliberately chosen a kind 


of empire not to be ruled by force, if he has deliberately 
set his children beyond that kind of control, that they 
may be governed by truth, reason, love, want, fear, and 
the like, acting through their consent ; if we find them 
able to act even against the will of God, as stones and 
vegetables can not, what more is necessary to vindicate 
his goodness, than to suggest that he has given them, 
possibly, a capacity to break allegiance, in order that 
there may be a meaning and a glory in allegiance, when 
they choose it ? 


There is, then, such a thing inherent in the system of 


- powers as a possibility of wrong ; for, given the possi- 


bility of right, we have the possibility of wrong. And 
it may, for aught that appears, be the very plan itself 
of God, to establish his powers in the right, by allow- 
ing them an experiment of the wrong, in which to school 


EVIL INHERENTLY POSSIBLE 85 


their liberty ; bringing them up again out of its bitter- 
ness, by a delivering process, to shun it with an intelli- 
gent and forever fixed abhorrence afterward. And 
then, if this should be his plan, what an immense com- 
plication of acts, events, processes, contrarieties, and 
caprices, must be involved in it. Nature, considered 
as the mere run of cause and effect, is simple as a jew’s- 
harp. But here we have a grand concilium, or repub- 
lic of wills, acting each for himself, and in that capacity 
to be trained, governed, turned about and about, and 
finally brought up into the harmony of a consenting 
choice and a common love and character. The system 
will be one that systematizés the caprices and discords 
of innumerable wills, and works results of order, through 
endless complications of disorder; having, in this fact, 
its real wisdom and magnificence. Thus how meager 
an affair to thought were our American republic, if it 
were nothing but the run of causes in the climate and 
soil, and the mere physiology of the men ; but, when it 
is considered as containing so many wills, acting all 
from themselves, incomputable in their action because 
they are uncaused in it ; reducing so many mixtures of 
contrarieties and discords to a beautiful resultant order 
and social unity ; striving still on, by the force of its 
organic nisus, toward a condition of historic greatness 
hitherto unknown to the world —considered thus, how 
truly sublime and wonderful a creation does it appear 
to be. And yet there are many who can not imagine 
that God has any system or law, in his great republic 
of freedom, if there be any discord, any contrariety, any 
infringement of his mandates, any disturbance of nature ; 
or indeed if he does not really impel and do every thing 
himself, by his own immediate and absolute causation. 
Whereas, if they could rise above the feeble conceit 


86 THE PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE 


by which they make the force of God their idol, they 
would see that, possibly, it may be the highest point 
of grandeur in his system, that it systematizes powers 
transcending nature, and even disorders in the field of 
nature itself. 

Or, if it be objected that the admission or fact of such 
disorders annihilates the unity of God’s empire, leaving 
it in a fragmentary, cloven state, which excludes the 
scientific idea of a proper universe, it is a good and 
sufficient answer that God’s unities are all, in the last 
degree, unities of end, or counsel as related to end; con- 
sisting never in a perfect concert of parts, or elements, 
but in a comprehensive order that takes up and tempers 
to its own purposes many antagonisms. What, in fact, 
is the order of heaven, or even the atomic order of par- 
ticles, but a resultant of the eternal strife by which 
they are instigated? What then if the powers are able 
to break loose, and do, from obligation ; when the sys- 
tem or plan of God is made large enough to include 
such a breaking loose, and deep enough in counsel, from 
the beginning, to handle it in terms of sovereign order. 
The higher unity is not gone because discord has come 
in points below, and would not be, even if the discord 
were eternal. Still it remains, comprehends every thing, 
moving still on its ends, as little diverted or disturbed, 
as if the powers all came to wed themselves to it in lov- 
ing obedience. There is a real universe now as before, 
because the universal nisus of the plan remains, and be- 
_ cause the regulative order that comprehends so great 
irregularity retains its integrity unbroken, its equilib- 
rium undisturbed. 


If now we raise the question more distinctly, what is 
the great problem of existence, as regards the order of 


A TRAINING INTO PERFECTION 87 


powers, or the human race as being such, it is not diffi- 
cult to answer, following out the view thus far pre- 


sented, that it is our perfection ; the perfection, that \ 


is, of our liberty, the schooling of our choice, or con- 
sent, as powers, so that we may be fully established in 
harmony with God’s will and character; unified with 
him in his will, glorified with him in the glory of his 
character, and so perfected with him in his eternal 
beatitude. Persons or powers are creatures, we have 
seen, who act, not by causality, but by consent; they 


‘must, therefore, be set in conditions that invite consent, 


and treated also in a manner that permits the caprices 
of liberty. It is also a remarkable distinction, we have 
noted, that they are creatures perfectible only after they 
are made, while mere natural quantities and objects are 
perfect as made. Just here, accordingly, the grand 
problem of their life and of the world begins. They are 
to be trained, formed, furnished, perfected ; and to this 
end are to be carried through just such scenes, experi- 
ences, changes, trials, variations, operations, as will best 
serve their spiritual perfection and their final fruition 
of each other and of God. If there are necessary perils 
in such a trial of their liberty, then they are to be set 
upon the course of such perils. Nor will it make any 
difference if the perils are such .as breed the greatest 
speculative difficulties. God does not frame his em- 
pire to suit and satisfy our speculations, but for our 
practical profit; to bring us up into his own excel- 
lence, and establish us eternally in the participation of 
his character. On this subject there would seem to be 
very little room for doubt. The scripture revelation 
purposes this view of life, our own observation confirms 
it, and besides thtre is really no other in which even 
our philosophy can comfortably rest. 


4 


88 WHICH TRAINING, AS BEING FOR, 


But this training of consent, this perfecting of liberty 
in the issues of character, it will help us at this early 


| point to observe, is nothing different from a preparation 


for society, and a drill-practice in the principles of so- 
ciety, that is, in truth, in purity, in justice, in patience, 


\. forgiveness, love, all the self-renouncing and beneficent 


virtues. Accordingly the course of training will itself 
be social; a trial under, in, and by society. The powers 
will be thrown together in terms of duty as being terms 
of society, and in terms of society as being terms of 
duty. Morality and the law of religion respect society 
and the condition of social well-being, which is the 
grand felicity of powers. Things have no society, or 
capacity of social relations. In mere nature, considered 
as a scheme of cause and effect, there is nothing social, 
any more than there is in the members of a steam- 
engine. And if we really believe that we ourselves 
are only wheels, in the play of an all-comprehending 
causation, it should be the end even of the feeling of 
society in us. Love, benefit, sympathy, injury, hatred, 
thanks, blame, character, worship, faith, —all that con- 
stitutes the reality of society, whether of men with God 
or of men with each other, belongs to the fact that we 
are consciously powers. Strip us of this, let all these 
fruits be regarded as mere dynamic results, under the 
head of natural philosophy, and they will change, at 
once, to be mere tricks, or impostures of natural magic. 
Our discipline, therefore, is to be such as our supernat- 
ural and social quality requires, the discipline of society. 
Since it is for society, it must be in and by society. We 
accordingly shall have a training as powers among other 
powers, such as will qualify us for a place of eternal 
unity and harmony with them under God, the central 
and First Power; so to be set by him in a consolidated, 


MUST BE IN, SOCIETY 89. 


everlasting kingdom of righteousness, and truth, and 
love, and peace. 

And thus it is that we find ourselves embodied in mat- 
ter, to act as powers upon, for, with, and, if we will, 
against each other, in all the endless complications of 
look, word, act, art, force, and persuasion; in the fam- 
ily and in the state, or two and two upon each other; in 
marriage, fraternity, neighborhood, friendship, trade, 
association, protection, hospitality, instruction, sympa- 
thy; or, if we will, in frauds, enmities, oppressions, cru- 
elties, and mutual temptations, —great men moving the 
age they live in by their eloquence; or shaping the ages 
to come by their institutions; or corrupting the world’s 
moral atmosphere by their bad thoughts, their fashions 
and vices; or tearing and desolating all things by irrup- 
tions of war, to win a throne of empire, or the honors 
of victors and heroes. By all these methods do we 
come into society, and begin to act, each one, upon the 
trains of cause and effect in nature; thus upon each 
other, from our own point of liberty. And accordingly | 
society is, in all its vast complications, an appointment | 
— we can not escape it. We can only say what kind \\ 
of experience it shall be as regards the fruits of char- |' 
acter inus. Meantime God is reigning over it, socially 
related himself to each member, governing and train- 
ing that member through his own liberty. Life, thus 
ordered, is a magnificent scheme to bring out the value 
of law and teach the necessity of right as the only con- 
servating principle of order and happiness; teaching 
the more powerfully that it teaches, if so it must, by 
disorder and sorrow. And nature, it will be observed, 
is the universal medium by or through which the train- 
ing is accomplished. The powers act on each other, by 
acting on the lines of cause and effect in nature; start- 


90 AND SOCIETY IS CARRIED ON 


ing thus new trains of events and consequences, by 
which they affect each other, in ways of injury or bless- 
ing. They speak and set the air in motion, as it other- 
wise would not move; and so the obedient air, played’ 
on by their sovereignty, becomes the vehicle of words 
that communicate innumerable stings, insults, flatteries, 
seductions, threats; or tones of comfort, love, and bless- 
ing. So of all the other elements, solid, fluid, or aerial 
—they are medial as between the powers. The whole 
play of commerce in society is through nature, and is in 
fact a playing on the causes and objects of nature by 
supernatural agents. All doings and misdoings are, in 
this view, a kind of discourse in the terms of nature, by 
which these supernatural agents, viz., men, answer to 
each other, or to God, in society. Their blasphemies 
and prayers and songs and threats, their looks and ges. 

tures, their dress and manners, their injuries and alms, 
their blows and barricades and bullets and bombs, these 
and such like are. society, the grand conversation by 
which our social discipline is carried on. And it is all 
a supernatural transaction. Asa conversation in words 
is not reducible to mere natural causation, no more is 
that conversation in bullets and bombs that we call a 
battle. Nature could as well talk, as compound her 
’ forces in cartridges and fire them with a leveled aim. 

Her activity in all these exchanges, or medial transac- 
tions, that are carried on so briskly, is only the activity 
of the powers through her, and is, in fact, supernatural. 

They start all these nimble couriers and set them flying 
back and forth, by the right they have to come down 
upon nature and act themselves into it. To a certain 
extent, they are inserted into nature and conditioned 
by it. They live in nature and are of it, up to the 
point of their will, but there they emerge into qualified 


THROUGH NATURE 91 


sovereignty. Without this inherence in nature they 
would have no media of action, no common terms of 
order, interest, or trial, and no such basis of reaction as 
would make the consequences of their action ascertain- 
able, or intelligible; without this sovereignty they 
would not be responsible. Hence God’s way has been, 
in all ages, and doubtless in all worlds, to set his super- 
natural agents in the closest connection with nature, 
there to have their action and there to perceive its ef- 
fects on themselves and others. Even the miracles of_' 
Jesus are set as deep in nature as possible; showing the 
wine of Cana to be made out of water, and not out of 
nothing; the multitude of the loaves out of seven, not 
out of none; that so the mind, being fastened to some- 
thing already existent, may see the miracle as a process; 
whereas, without a something in nature to begin with, 
there could be no process, and therefore nothing to / 
observe. 

How far this range of society extends, whether nature 
is not, by some inherent necessity, a medium open to 
‘the commerce of all the powers of all worlds, involvy- 
ing, in that manner, a perilous exposure to demoniacal 
irruptions, till moral defenses and safeguards are 
prepared against them, are questions not to be an- 
swered here; but we shall recur to them shortly in 
another place. 


It has been already intimated, or shown as a possible 
thing, that the race, regarded as an order of powers, 
may break loose from God’s control and fall into sin. 
Will they so break loose? Regarding them simply as 
made and set forth on the course of training necessary 
to their establishment in holy virtue, will they retain 
their innocence? Have we any reason to think, and if 


92 PROBABILITY OF EVIL, 


so what reason to think, that they will drop their alle- 
giance and try the experiment of evil? 

It is very certain that God desires no such result. 
When it takes place, it will be against his will and 
against every attribute of his infinitely beneficent and 
pure character. It will only be true that he has created 
moral and accountable beings with this peril incident, 
rather than to create only nature and natural things ; 
having it in view, as the glorious last end of his plan, 
finally to clear us of sin by passing us, since we will 
descend to it, completely through it. He will have 
given us, or, at least, the original new-created progeni- 
tors, a constituently perfect mold; so that, taken simply 
as forms of being, apart from any character begun by 
action, they are in that exact harmony and perfection 
that, without or before deliberation, spontaneously runs 
to good; organically ready, with all heavenly affinities 
in play, to break qut in a perfect song. So far they are 
innocent and holy by creation, or by the simple fact of 
their constituent perfection in the image of their Maker; 
only there is no sufficient strength, or security in their 
~ holiness, because there is no deliberative element in it. 
Deliberation, when it comes, as come it must, will be 
the inevitable fall of it; and then, when the side of 
counsel in them is sufficiently instructed by that fall 
and the bitter sorrow it yields, and the holy freedom is 
restored, it may be or become an eternally enduring 
principle. Spontaneity in good, without counsel, is 
weak; counsel and deliberative choice, without sponta- 
neity, are only a character begun; issued in spontane- 
ity, they are the solid reality of everlasting good. 
Still it will not, even then, be true that God has con- 
trived their sin, as a means of the ulterior good, though 
it may be true that they, by their knowledge of it as 


AGAINST THE WILL OF GOD 93. 


being only evil, will be intelligently fixed, forever after- 
ward, in their abhorrence of it. Nor if we speak of sin 
as permitted in this view by God, will it be any other- 
wise permitted, than as not being prevented, either by 
the non-creation, or by the uncreating of the race. 

It may appear to some that such a view of God’s 
relations to sin excludes the fact, or faith of an eternal 
plan, showing God to be, in fact, the victim of _sin; 3 
having neither power to withstand it, nor ‘any system 
of purposes able to include and manage it. On this 
subject of foreordination or predetermined plan, there 
is a great deal of very crude and confused speculation. 
If there be any truth which every Christian ought to 
assume, as evident beyond all question, it is that God 
has some eternal plan that includes every thing, and 
puts every thing in its place. That he “ foreordains 
whatsoever comes to pass” is only another version of 
the same truth. Nor is there any the least difficulty 
in distinguishing the entire consistency of this with all 
that we have said concerning God’s relations to the 
existence of evil—no difficulty, in fact, which does not 
occur in phrasing the conduct and doings even of men. 

Suppose, for example, that some person, actuated by 
a desire to benefit, or bless society, takes it in hand to 
establish and endow a school of public charity. In 
such a case, he will go into a careful consideration 
of all the possible plans of organization, with a view to 
select the best. In order to make the case entirely 
parallel, suppose him to have a complete intuition of 
these plans, or possibilities— A, B, and C, &c., on to 
the end of the alphabet; so that, given each plan, 
or possibility, with all its features and appointments, 
he can’ see precisely what will follow —all the good, 
all the mischief, that will be incurred by every child 


94 GOD STILL GOVERNS 


that will ever attend the school. For, in each of these 
plans or possibles, there are mischiefs incident; and 
there will be children attendant, who, by reason of no 
' fault of the school, but only by their perverse abuse of 
it, will there be ruined. The benefactor and founder, 
having thus discovered that a certain plan, D, combines 
the greatest amount of good results and the smallest of 
bad ones, the question rises whether he shall adopt that 
plan? By the supposition he must, for it is the best 
possible. And yet, by adopting that plan, he perceives 
that he will make certain also every particular one of 
the mischiefs that will be suffered by the abuse of it, 
and so the ruin of every child that will be ruined under 
it. As long as the plan is only a possible, a thing of 
contemplation, no mischiefs are suffered, no child is 
ruined; but the moment he decides to make the plan 
actual, or set the school on foot, he decides, makes cer- 
tain, or, in that sense, foreordinates, all the particular 
bad conduct and all the particular undoing there to be 
wrought, as intuitively seen by him beforehand. Noth- 
ing of this would come to pass if the school, D, were 
not founded ; and, in simply deciding on the plan, with 
a perfect perception of what will take place under it, 
he decides the bad results as well as the good, though 
in senses entirely different. The bad are not from him, 
nor from any thing he has introduced, or appointed ; 
but wholly from the abuses of his beneficence practiced 
by others whom he undertook to bless. The good is 
all from him, being that for which he established the 
school. Both are knowingly made certain, or fore- 
ordained by his act. 

In this illustration it is not difficult to distinguish 
the true relation of God to the existence of evil. In 
selecting the best possible plan among the millions of 


BY AN ETERNAL PLAN 95 


possibles open to his contemplation, and deciding to set 
on foot, or actualize that particular universe, he also 


~~—_made certain all the evils, or mischiefs, seen to be con- 


nected with it. But they are not from him because 
they are, in this indirect manner, made certain, or fore- 
ordinated by him. It is hardly right to say that they 
are permitted by him. They come in only as necessary 
evils that environ the best plan possible. Such are the 
relations of God to the existence of evil. If it comes, 
it is not from him, any more than the ruin of certain 
children in the school, just supposed, are from the 
benevolent founder. And yet he is not disappointed, 
or frustrated. Still he governs with a plan, a perfect 


- and eternal plan, which comprehends, in its exact date 


and place, every thing which every wrong-doing and 
revolting spirit will do, even to the end of the world. 

Thus far we have spoken of God’s relations to the 
existence of evil, or its possible prevention. We pass 
over now to the side of his subjects ; and there we shall 
find reason, as regards their self-retention, to believe 
that the certainty of their sin is originally involved in 
their spiritual training as powers. Made organically 
perfect, set as full in God’s harmony as they can be, in 
the mold of their constitution, surrounded by as many 
things as possible to allure them to ways of obedience 
and keep them from the seductions of sin, we shall. dis- 
cover still that, given the fact of their begun existence, 
and their trial as persons or powers, they are in a con- 
dition privative that involves their certain lapse into 
evil. 

If the language I employ in speaking of this matter 
is peculiar, it is because I am speaking with caution 
and carefully endeavoring to find terms that will con- 


96 EVIL FROM A CONDITION PRIVATIVE, 


vey the right, separated from any false, impression. I 
speak of a “condition privative,” it will be observed; 
not of any positive ground, or cause, or necessity ; for, 
if there were any natural necessity for sin, it would not 
be sin. If it were caused, as all simply natural events 
. are caused; or, what is the same, if it were a natural 
effect, it would not be sin. We might as well blame 
the running of the rivers, in such a case, as the wrong- 
doing of men; for what we may call their wrong-doing 
is, after all, nothing but the run of causes hid in their per- 
son, as gravity is hid in the running waters. If we could 
show a positive ground for sin; that man, for example, is 
a being whose nature it is to choose the strongest motive, 
as of a scale-beam to be turned by the heaviest weight, 
and that the strongest motive, arranged to operate on 
“men, is the motive to do evil, that in fact would be the 
denial of sin, or even of its possibility; indeed it is 
so urged by the disciples of naturalism on every side. 
So again if we could, in a way of positive philosophy, 
account for the existence of evil— exactly what multi- 
tudes even of Christian believers set themselves to do, 
not observing that, if they could execute their endeavor, 
they could also make as good answer for evil, on the 
judgment-day of the world—if, I say, we could properly 
and positively account for evil, in this manner, it would 
not be evil any longer. When we speak of accounting 
for any thing, we suppose a discovery of first principles 
to which it may be referred; but sin can be referred to 
no first principles, it is simply the act of a power that 
spurns all inductives back of the doer’s will, and asserts 
itself, apart from all first principles, or even against 
them. Therefore, to avoid all these false implications, 
and present the simple truth of fact, I speak of a “con- 
_ dition privative” ; by which I mean a moral state that 


NOT FROM A GROUND POSITIVE 97 


is only inchoate, or incomplete, lacking some thing not 
yet reached, which is necessary to the probable rejection 
of evil. Thus an infant child runs directly toward, and 
will, in fact, run into, the fire; not because of any neces- 
sity upon him, but simply because he is in a condition 
privative, as regards the experience needed to prevent 
him. I said also “involves the certain lapse into evil” 
—not “produces,” “infers,” “makes necessary.” There 
is no connection of science or law between the subject 
and predicate, such that, one being given, the other 
holds by natural consequence; and yet this condition 
privative “involves,” according to our way of appre- 
hending it, a certain conviction or expectation of the 
event stated. Thus we often attain to expectations 
concerning the conduct of men, as fixed as those which 
we hold concerning natural events, where the connec- 
tion of cause and consequence is absolute. We become 
acquainted, as we say, with a certain person; we learn 
how he works in his freedom, or how, as a power acting 
from himself, he is wont to carry himself in given con- 
ditions; and finally we attain to a sense of him so 
intimate that, given almost any particular occasion, or 
transaction, touching his interest, we have an expecta- 
tion, or confidence regarding what he will do, about as 
fixed as we have in the connections of natural events. 
The particular thing done to him “involves,” in our 
apprehension, as the certain fact, that he will do a par- 
ticular thing consequent. And yet we have no concep- 
tion that he is determined, in such matters, by any 
causation, or law of necessary connection ; the certainty 
we feel is the certainty, not of a thing, but of a power 
in the sovereign determination of his liberty. In this 
and no other sense do we speak of a condition privative, 
that involves a certain lapse into evil. 


98 OUR NECESSARY DEFECT 


Having distinguished, in this careful manner, the true 
import of the terms employed, it now remains to look 
for that condition privative on which so much depends. 
And we shall discover it in three particulars. 

1. In the necessary defect of knowledge and conse- 
quent weakness of a free person, or power, considered 
as having just “begun to be. We must not imagine, 
because he is a power, able in his action to set himself 
above all natural causes and act originatively as from 
himself, that he is therefore strong. On the contrary, 
even though he begins in the full maturity of his per- 
son, having a constitution set in perfect harmony with 
the divine order and truth, he is the weakest, most unper- 
fect of beings. The stones of the world are strong in 
their destiny, because it stands in God, under laws of 
causation fixed by him. But free agents are weak be- 
eause they are free; left to act originatively, held fast 
by no superior determination, bound to no sure destiny ; 
save as they are trained into character, in and through 
their experience. 

Our argument forbids that we should assume the 
truth of the human genesis reported in scripture his- 
tory; for that is commonly denied by naturalism. I 
may not even assume that we are descended of a com- 
mon stock. But this, at least, is certain, that we each 
began to be, and therefore we may the more properly 


take the case of Adam for an example; because, not 


being corrupted by any causes back of him, as we most 
certainly are, and, making a beginning in the full 
maturity of his powers, he may be supposed to have 
had some advantages for standing fast in the right, | 
which we have not. 

As we look upon him, raising the question whether 
he has moral strength to stand, we observe, first of all, 


OF KNOWLEDGE 99 


that being in a perfect form of harmony, uncorrupted, 

clean, in one word, a complete integer, he must of course 
_be spontaneous to good, and can never fall from it until 
his spontaneity is interrupted by some reflective exer- 
cise of contrivance or deliberative judgment. But this 
will come to pass, without fail, in a very short time; 
because he is not only spontaneous to good, but is also 
a reflective and deliberative being. And then what 
shall become of his integrity? 

Entering still further into his case, as we raise this 
question, we perceive that he holds a place, or point, 
in his action, between two distinct ranges of thought 
and motivity, between necessary ideas on one hand, and 
knowledges or judgments drawn from experience, on 
the other. In the first place, being a man, he has neces- 
sarily developed in his consciousness the law of right. 
He thinks the right, and, in thinking it, feels himself 
eternally bound by it. We may call it an idea in him, 
or a law, or a category of his being. He would not 
be a man without it; for it is only in connection with 
this, and other necessary ideas, that he ranges above 
the animals. Animals have no necessary ideas; these, 
especially such as are moral, are the necessary and 
peculiar furniture of man. What could a man do in 
the matter of justice, inquiring after it, determining 
what it is, if the idea of justice were not first de- 
veloped, as a standard thought or idea, in his mind? 
Who would set himself on inquiries after true things 
and judgments, if the idea of truth were not in him, 
as a regulative thought, or category of his nature? 
Thus it is, by our idea of right, that we are set to 
the conceiving, or thought of duty, as well as placed 
under obligation itself, and we could not so much as 
raise the question of virtue or morality, if we were not 


100 OUR NECESSARY DEFECT 


first configured to its law, and set in action as being 
consciously under it. Herein, too, we are specially 
resembled to God; for, by this same idea of right, 
necessary, immutable, eternal, it is that he is placed 


in obligation, and it is by his ready and perfect 
homage to this that his glorious character is built. 


And this law is absolute or unconditional to him as 
to us, to us as to him. No matter what may befall, 
or not befall us, on the empirical side of our life. No 
impediment, no threat, or fear, or force can excuse us; 
least of all can any mere condition privative, such as 
ignorance, inexperience, or the want of opposing motive. 


| Simply to have thought the right, is to be under obli- 


gation to it, without any motive or hope in the world 
of experience, and despite of all opposing motives there. 
Even if the worlds fall on us, we must do the right. 
Pass over now from the absolute or ideal side of our 
existence, to the contingent, or empirical. Here we are, 
dealing with effects, consequences, facts; trying our 
strength in attempts; computing, comparing, judging, 
learning how to handle things, and how they will handle 
us. And by this kind of experience we get all the furni- 
ture of our mind and character, save what we have as it 
were concreated in us, in those necessary ideas of which 
we have spoken, and which are presupposed in all expe- 
rience. What now, reverting to the case of Adam, as a 
just begun existence, is the amount of his experimental, 
empirical, or historic knowledge? The knowledges we 
here inquire after, it will be observed, are such as are 
gotten historically, one by one, and one after another, 
under conditions of time; by seeing, doing, suffering, 
comparing, distinguishing, remembering, and other like 
operations. A man’s knowledge here is represented, 
of course, by what he has been through, and felt, and 


OF KNOWLEDGE 101 


thought. What then can he know, at the first moment \ 
of his being, when, by the supposition, he has never | 
had a thought, or an experience; or, if we take him > 
at a point an hour or a day later, none but that of a 
single hour or day? Being a perfectly disposed creature, 
the first man sets off, we will say, in a spontaneous obedi- 
ence to the right, which is the absolute law of his nature 
and is in him originally, by the necessary conditions of 
his nature. But there comes up shortly a question 
regarding some act, confessedly not right, or some act 
which, being forbidden, violates his sense of right. No 
matter what it is, he can be as properly and will be as 
effectually tested, by adhering to the sense of obligation, 
in withholding from an apple forbidden, as in any thing 
else. Here then he stands upon the verge of experi-. 
mental wrong, debating the choice. What it is in its 
idea, or obligatory principle, he knows; but what it is 
in the experience of its fruits or consequences he knows 
not. The discord, bitterness, remorse, and inward hell 
of wrong are hidden, as yet, from his view. If minatory 
words have been used, pronouncing death upon him in 
case of disobedience, some degree of apprehension may 
have been awakened in him anticipatively, under the 
natural efficacy of manner and expression, which, even 
prior to any culture of experience, have a certain degree 
of power. But how little will this amount to in a way 
of guard or security for his virtue, for he is a knowing 
creature still; wanting therefore to know, and, if it were 
not for this noble instinct of knowledge, would not be 
aman. What then is this wrong he is debating, what 
does it signify? He does not ask whether it will bring 
him evil or good; for what these are, experimentally, he 
does not know. Enough that here is some great secret 
of knowledge to be opened; how can he abstain, how 


102 OUR NECESSARY PERIL 


refuse to break through the mask of this unknown 
something, and know! He is tempted thus, we per- 
ceive, not by something positive, placed in his way, but 
by a mere condition privative, a perplexing defect of 
knowledge incident to the fact of his merely begun 
existence. 

Doubtless it will be urged that no such wrong would 
ever be debated, if some positive desire of the nature — 
were not first excited, some constitutional susceptibility, 
or want, drawn out in longing for its object. Even so, 
precisely that we have allowed ; for what is the desire 
of knowledge itself but a positive and most powerful 
instinct of the soul? Only the more clear is it that, if 
the desired knowledge were already in possession, the 
temptation itself would be over. So if some bodily 
appetite were excited; how trivial and contemptible 
were this, or any proposed pleasure, if only the tre- 
mendous evil and woe of the wrong were already 
known, as it will be after years of struggle and suffer- 
ing init. The grand peril therefore is still seen to be 
of a privative and not of a positive nature. There 
must be positive impulses to be governed, or else there 
could not be a man, and the peril is that there is yet 
no experimental knowledge on hand, and can be none, 
sufficient to protect and guard the process. 

And yet the man is guilty if he makes the fatal 
choice. Even if the strongest motive were that way, 
he is yet a being able to choose against the strongest, 
and he consciously knows that he ought. In any view 

\ he is not obliged to choose the wrong, more than a 
\child is obliged to thrust his hand into the blaze of a 
lamp, the experience of which is unknown. The cases 
are, in fact, strongly analogous, save that the wrong- 
doer knows beforehand, as the child certainly does not, 


UNDER SUCH DEFECT 103 


that the act is wrong or criminal; a consideration by 
which he consciously ought to be restrained, be the 
consequences what they may. And yet, who can ex- | 
pect that he will forever be restrained, never breaking 
over this mysterious line to make the bad experiment, 
or try what is this unknown something eternally before 
his eyes! If we rightly remember, the false prophet 
somewhere represents the difficulty of a certain course 
of virtue, by that of crossing the fiery gulf of hell 
upon a hair. Possibly our first man may cross upon 
this hair and keep his balance till he is completely 
over, but who will expect him to doit? He may look 
upon the tree of knowledge of good and evil, (rightly 
is it named,) and pass it by. He can doit; there isa 
real possibility as there is a real obligation ; but Adam, | 
we are told, did not, neither is there any the least 
probability that any other of mankind, with all his 
advantages, ever would. 

If it should be apprehended by any that a condition 
privative, connected as it plainly is with such perils, 
quite takes away the guilt of sin, that, I answer, is by 
the supposition impossible. It really takes away noth- 
ing. The right and only true statement is, that the 
guilt of sin is not as greatly enhanced as it would be, _ 
if all the knowledge needful to the strength of virtue 
were supplied. We differ in this matter from those 
naturalistic philosophers, who reduce all human wrong 
to weakness, and obliterate, in that manner, all the dis- 
tinctions of good-and evil. We really excuse nothing; 
we only do not condemn as severely as if the eternal 
and absolute obligation of right, revealed in every 
human bosom, were more thoroughly fortified by pru- 
dential and empiric knowledge. 

It may also be objected, as contrary to all experience, 


104 WHICH PERIL DOES NOT 


as well as to the nature of sin itself, that sin should 
impart strength, or increase the capacity of virtue. 
What in fact does it bring, but bondage, disability, and 
death? Even so—this is the knowledge of sin, and 
no one is the more capable of holiness on account of it. 
It is the very point indeed of this knowledge that it 
knows disability, helplessness, despair. And exactly 
this it is that prepares the possibility of a new creation. 
Impotence discovered is the capacity of redemption. 
And then, when a soul has been truly regenerated and 
/ set in union with God, its bad experience will be the 
. condition of its everlasting stability and strength. 

It will naturally enough be objected, again, by some, 
who hold the principle of disinterested and absolute 
virtue here assumed, that no mere defect of empirical 
knowledge— the knowledge of prudence or self-inter- 
est — creates a condition privative as regards the se- 
curity of virtue ;— what need of experience to enforce 
obligations that are perfect, apart from all conse- 
quences? If one is loving God, as he ought, simply for 
his own excellence or beauty, and living by the inspi- 
ration of that excellence, what matter is it whether he 
knows the practical bitterness, the woe, the hell of sin, 
and understands the penal sanctions of reward and 
penalty set against it, or not? Is he going to fall out 
of his love and his inspired liberty, because he is not 
sufficiently shut in to it by fears and apprehended 
miseries! There is an appearance of force in the ob- 
jection, and yet it is only an appearance. For, in the 
first place, it is not assumed that Adam, or any other 
man, put to the trial of a right life, is weak in his spon- 
taneous obedience, because he is not sufficiently held 
to it by the prudential motives of fear and known de- 
struction; but because his curiosity, as a knowing 


EXCUSE OUR SIN 105 


creature, is provoked, or will be, by not so much as 
knowing what the motives are ; in a word, by the pro- 
found mystery that overhangs the question of wrong 
itself. Indeed he does not even so much as know 
what it will do, whether it will raise to some unknown 
pitch of greatness in power and intelligence or not. 
In the next place, it is not assumed that the prudential 
motives of reward and penalty will ever recover any 
fallen spirit from his defections and bring him into the 
inspired, free state of love. The office of such means 
and motives is wholly negative ; viz., to arrest the bad 
soul in its evil and bring it to a stand of self-renuncia- 
tion, where the higher motives of the divine excellence 
and love may kindle it. In the third place, it is not 
assumed that, when souls are recovered from evil, and 
finally established in holy liberty, which is the problem 
of their trial, they are made safe for the coming eter- 
nity by knowing how dreadfully they will be scorched 
by evil, in case they relapse ; but their safety is that, 
having been dreadfully scorched already by it, they 
have thoroughly proved what is in it, and extirpated 
all the fascinations of its mystery. 


2. It is another condition privative, as regards the . 
moral perfection of powers, that they require an empiri- 
eal training, or course of government, to get them 
established in the absolute law of duty, and that this 
empirical training must probably have a certain adverse 
effect for a time before it can mature its better results. 
The eternal idea of justice makes no one just; that of 
truth makes no one true; that of beauty makes no soul 
beautiful. So the eternal law of right makes no one 
righteous. All these standard ideas require a process 
or drill, in the field of experience, in order to become 


106 INHERENT NEED ALSO 


matured into characters, or to fashion character in the 
molds they supply. And this process, or drill-practice, 
will require two economies or courses ; the first of which 
will be always a failure, taken in itself, but will furnish, 
nevertheless, a necessary ground for the second, by which 
its effects will be converted into benefits ; and then the 
result —a holy character — will be one of course that 
presupposes both. 

The first named course, or economy, is that of law; 
which is called, even in scripture, the letter that killeth. 
The law absolute, of which we just now spoke, is a 
merely necessary idea; commanding us, from eternity, 
as it did the great Creator himself — do right — making 
no specifications and applying no motives, save what are 
contained in its own absolute excellence and authority. 
But the receiving it in that manner, which is the only 
manner in which it can be truly received, supposes a 
mind and temper already configured to it, so as to be in 
it in mere love and the spontaneous homage that en- 
thrones it because of its excellence, and God because 
he represents its excellence. Here, therefore, is the 
problem, how to produce this practical configuration. 
And it is executed thus : — God, as a power and a force 
extraneous, undertakes for it, first of all, to enforce it 
empirically, by motives extraneous; those of reward 
and fear, profit and loss. He takes the law absolute 
down into the world of prudence, re-enacting it there 
and preparing to train us into it, by a drill-practice 
under sanctions. In one view, the sanctions added are 
inappropriate ; for they are opposite to all spontaneity, 
being appeals to interest, and so far calls that draw the 
soul away from the more inspiring considerations of 
inherent excellence. The subject is lifted by no inspira- 
tion. He is down under the law, at the best, trying to 


OF THE LETTER THAT KILLETH, 107 


come up to it by willing, punctuatim et seriatim, what 
particular things are required in the specifications made 
by it. If we could suppose the law thus enforced to be 
perfectly observed under this pressure of prudential 
sanctions, it would only make a dry, punctilious and 
painfully apprehensive kind of virtue, without liberty, _ 
_or dignity. The more probable result is an habitual 
and wearisome selfishness ; for, as long as the mind is 
occupied by these empirical and extraneous sanctions, 
it is held to the consideration of self-interest only ; and 
the motives it is all the while canvassing, are such as 
the worst mind can feel, as well as that which is truly 
upright. And yet there is a benefit preparing in this 
first, or legal economy, which is indispensable ; viz., 
this, that it gives adhesiveness to the law, which other- 
wise, as being merely ideal, we might lightly dismiss ; 
that the friction it creates, like some mordant in the 
dyeing process, sets in the law and fastens it practically, 
or as an experimental reality ; that the woes of penalty 
wage a battle for it, in which the soul is continually 
worsted and so broken in that it develops in short a 
whole body of moral judgments and convictions, that 
wind the soul about as cords of detention, till finally 
the law to be enforced becomes an experimental verity 
fully established. Just here the soul begins to feel a 
dreadful coil of thraldom round it. To get away from 
the law is impossible ; for it is hedged about with fire. 
To keep it is impossible; for the struggle is only a 
heaving under self-interested motive, to get clear of a 
state whose bane is selfishness. What it means, the 
subject can not find. He is in a condition of bitter 
thraldom ; his sin appears to be sin even more than 
ever; and the whole discipline he is under seems 
only to minister the knowledge of sin; he groans, as 


108 AS A STAGE 


it were, under a body of sin and death that he can 
not heave. 

And so he is made ready for the second economy, 
that of liberating grace and redemption. For now, in 
Christ, the law returns, a person, clothed in all personal 
beauty, and offers itself to the choice, even as a friend 
and deliverer ; so that, being taken with love to Christ, 
and drawing near at his call in holy trust, the bondman 
is surprised to find that he is loving the law as the per- 
fect law of liberty ; which was the point to be gained 
or carried. And so, what began, as a necessary idea, 
is wrought into a character and become eternal fact. 
The whole operation, it will be observed, supposes a 
condition privative in the subject, such that he suffers, 
at first, a kind of repulsion by the law, and is only won 
to it by embracing the goodness of it in a personal 
friend and deliverer. 

And something like this double administration of law 
and liberty we distinguish, in many of the matters even 
of our worldly life. No exactness of drill makes an 
army efficient or invincible, till it is fired by some free 
impulse from the leader, or the cause; and yet the 
wearisome and tedious drill is a previous condition, 
without which this latter were impossible. No great 
work of genius was ever written in the way of work, 
or before the wings were lifted by some gale of inspira- 
tion; which gale, again, would never have begun to 
blow, had not the windows of thought and the chambers 
of light and beauty within.been opened, by years of 
patient toil and study. The artist plods on wearily, 
drudging in the details of his art, till finally the inspira- 
tion takes him and, from that point onward, his hand is 
moved by his subject, with no conscious drudgery or 
labor. In the family, we meet a much closer, and 


OF TRANSITION 109 


equally instructive analogy. The young child is over- 
taken first by the discipline of the house, in a form of 
law ; commanded, forbidden, sent, interdicted, all in a 
way of authority, and to that authority is added some- 
thing which compels respect. If he is a ductile and 
gentle child, he will be generally obedient; but the 
examples are few in which the child will not sometimes 
be openly restive, or éven stiffen himself in willful 
disobedience. In any case, it will be law, not coincid- 
ing always with the child’s wishes, or his opinions of 
pleasure and advantage ; and there will be a sense of 
constraint, more or less irksome, as if the authority felt 
were repugnant and contrary to the desired happiness. 
By and by, however, authority changes its aspect and 
becomes lovely. The habit of obedience, the experience 
had of parental fidelity and tenderness, and the dis- 
covery made of absurdity and hidden mischief in the 
things interdicted, as it seemed arbitrarily, gradually 
abolishes the sense of law and substitutes a control not 
felt before, the control of personal love and respect. 
So that, finally, the man of thirty will carefully and 
reverently anticipate the minutest wishes of a parent, 
and, if that can be called obedience, will obey him; when, 
as a child of three, he could barely endure his authority, 
and submitted to it only because it was duty enforced. 
Such is the analogy of common life. Law and liberty 
are the two grand terms under which it is passed —law 
_first and liberty afterward. And with all this corre- 
sponds what is said, in the New Testament, of law as 
related to gospel. It is said, in one view, of the labori- 
ous ritual of Moses; yet, by this historic reference, it is 
designed to lead the mind back into a more general and 
deeper truth. It is called “the letter that killeth,” as 
related to “the spirit that giveth life.” It is said to 


110 TO SPIRITUAL LIBERTY 


have its value in the development of knowledge; for by 
the law is “the knowledge of sin” —“that sin by the 
commandment might become exceeding sinful.” It is 
bondage introducing and preparing liberty. “The law 
gendereth to bondage,” but the gospel, “ Jerusalem that 
is above, is free.” “If there had been a law that 
could have given life, verily righteousness should have 
been by the law;” but that was impossible. “It is the 
schoolmaster to bring us to Christ,” and then, having 


‘embraced him, he becomes a new inspiration in our 
_ love, after which we no more need “to be under a school- 


master.” ‘The law made nothing perfect, but the 
bringing in of a better hope did.” 

There is reason to suspect that many will reject what 
Iam here advancing. They will do it, of course, for the 
simple reason that they know no other kind of virtue 
but that which is legal, having therefore, in their con- 
sciousness, nothing which answers to the liberty of the 
Spirit. To them, what I have here said will have an 
appearance of cant. Exactly contrary to which, I affirm 
it as the only competent philosophy, perceiving, I think, 
as clearly as I perceive any thing, that the conjunction 
discovered in Christianity of these two ministrations is 
not any casual or accidental matter —as if men had 
somehow fallen under law, and God was constrained, 
afterward, to do some thing for them — on the contrary, 
that the whole management is from before the founda- 


tion of the world, having respect to a grand antecedent 


necessity, involved in the perfecting of virtue. God 
never proposed to perfect a character in men by mere 
legal obedience. But he instituted law originally, no 
doubt, as a first stage, preparatory to a second; both of 
which were to be kept on foot together, and both of 
which are blended, in one way or another, probably, in 
the training of all holy minds in all worlds. 


A THIRD LIABILITY 111 


3. There appears to be yet another condition priva- 
tive, as regards our security against sin, in the social 
relation of powers and their trial in and through that 
relation; viz., that they are, at first, exposed to invasions 
of malign influence from each other, which can nowise 
be effectually prevented, save as they are finally fortified 
by the defenses of character. In this view, if I am 
right, a great part of the problem of existence must con- 
sist in what may be called the fencing of powers; that 
is, by assorting and separating the good from the bad, 
and rendering one class inaccessible to the arts and 
annoyances of the other. 

The individual, as we have seen, is to be perfected 
for society ; and, for that reason, he must needs have 
his trial in and through society. A_ still wider truth 
appears to be that the perfect society thus preparing is 
to be one and universal, comprehending the righteous 
populations of all worlds and ages; for the terms of 
duty and religion are in their nature universal ; and for 
this reason it appears also to be necessary, that the trial 
and training should be in some open field of activity 
common to all the powers. Accordingly, as we are made 
with social, and, if I may use the term, commercial na- 
tures ; having inlets of sympathy and impression, by 
which we may feel one another’s capacities to receive 
and give, to wrong, to offend, to comfort, to strengthen, 
to seduce, and betray one another ; so there is an ante- 
cedent probability that the terms of social exposure will 
involve some possibility of access, on the part of beings 
unseen, that are not of our race. Indeed, if it should 
happen that spirits are impossible to be sorted and 
fenced apart by walls of matter, or gulfs of distance, or 
abysses of emptiness, something like this would seem 
to be. necessarily involved, till they are sorted and the 


112 TO INVASION, 


gates of commerce are shut fast, by the repulsions of 
contrary affinities. And accordingly, till this takes 
place, there must be exposures to good and malign in- 
fluence, more numerous than we can definitely mark or 
distinguish. 

With this corresponds, it will be observed, all that is 
said in the scriptures of the activity of ministering 
angels engaged to confirm and comfort us, the insidious 
arts of a bad spirit to accomplish our fall, and the man- 
ifold enticements and malignant possessions of evil 
demons generally. But I advert to these representa- 
tions, it will be observed, not in a way of assuming 
their authenticity, for that is forbidden by the nature 
of my argument. I only cite them as offering concep- 
tions to our mind, or imagination, that may be neces- 
sary to a full comprehension of what is included in the 
subject. 

Many will object most sturdily and peremptorily, I 
am well aware, to the possibility of enticements and 
arts, practiced by unseen agents, to draw us off from 
our fidelity to God; alleging that such an exposure 
impeaches the fatherhood of God, and virtually destroys 
our responsibility. But what if it should happen to be 
involved, as the necessary condition of any properly 
social existence ? And it might as well be urged that 
every temptation is an impeachment of God, which 
comes from sources unseen, being an approach that takes 
us off our guard, and upsets the balance, possibly, of 
our judgments, just when we are most implicitly con- 
fiding in them. Allowing such an objection, therefore, 
responsibility would be impossible ; for who of us was 
ever able to see distinctly by what avenues all of his 
temptations or enticements came? Besides, saying 
nothing of bad spirits, by how many methods, by air, 


AT A GREAT DISADVANTAGE, 113 


look, sympathy, do we produce immediate impressions 
in each other, whose sources are never noted or sus- 
pected ; conveying sentiments drawing to this or that, 
fascinating, magnetizing, playing upon one another, by 
methods as subtle and secret, as if the mischief came 
from powers of darkness. And yet we never imagine 
that such enticements encroach at all on the grounds 
ofour just responsibility ; and all for the manifest rea- 
son that it never matters whence our enticements 
come, or by what arts the color of our judgments is 
varied and their equilibrium disturbed ; still we know, 
in all cases, that the wrong is wrong, and knowing 
that is enough to complete our responsibility. 

I am well aware of the modern tendency to resolve 
what is said on this subject in the scripture into figures 
of speech, excluding all idea of a literal intermeddling 

_of bad spirits. But that there are bad spirits, there is 
no more reason to doubt, than that there are bad men, 
(who are in fact bad spirits,) and as little that the bad 
spirits are spirits of mischief, and will act in character, 
according to their opportunity. As regards the posses- 
sion by foul spirits, it has been maintained, by many of 
the sturdiest supporters of revelation, and by refer- 
ence to the words employed in one or two cases by 
the evangelists themselves, that they were only dis- 
eases regarded in that light. Others have assumed 
the necessary absurdity of these possessions without 
argument ; and still others have made them a subject 
of much scoffing and profane ridicule. For the last 
half-century, and contemporaneously with our modern 
advances in science, there has been a general gravita- 
tion of opinion, regarding this and many other points, 
toward the doctrine of the Sadducees. Which makes 
it only the more remarkable, that now, at last, a con- 


114 FROM THE ASSAULTS 


siderable sect of our modern Sadducees themselves, 
who systematically reject the faith of any thing super- 
natural, are contributing what aid they can to restore 
the precise faith of the New Testament, respecting foul 
spirits. They do not call their spiritual visitors devils, 
or their demonized mediums possessed persons. But 
the low manners of their spirits and the lying oracles 
which it is agreed that some of them give, and the 
power they display of acting on the lines of cause and 
effect in nature, when thumping under tables, jolting 
stoves, and floating men and women through the upper 
spaces of rooms, proves them to be, if they are any 
thing, supernatural beings; leaving no appreciable 
distinction between them and the demoniacal irrup- 
tions of scripture. For though there be some talk of 
electricity and science, and a show of reducing the new 
discovered commerce to laws of calculable recurrence, 
it is much more likely to be established by their exper- 
iments, as a universal fact, that whatever being, of 
whatever world, opens himself to the visitation, or 
invites the presence of powers, indiscriminately as re- 
spects their character, whether it be under some thin 
show of scientific practice or not, will assuredly have 
the commerce invited! Far enough is it from being 
either impossible, or incredible, and exactly this is what 
our new school of charlatanism suggests, that immense 
multitudes of powers, interfused, in their self-active 
liberty, through all the abysses and worlds of nature, 
have it as the battle-field of their good or malign activ- 
ity, doing in it and upon it, as the scriptures testify, 
acts supernatural that extend to us. This being true, 
what shall be expected, but that where there is any 
thing congenial in temper or character, to set open the 
soul, and nothing of antipathy to repel; or where any 


OF BAD SPIRITS 115 


one, through a licentious curiosity, a foolish conceit of 
science, or a bad faith in powers of necromancy, calls 
on spirits to come, no matter from what world —in 
such a case what shall follow, but that troops of malign 
powers rush in upon their victim, to practice their arts 
_ in him at will. I know nothing at all personally of 
these new mysteries ; but if a man, as Townsend and 
many others testify, can magnetize his patient, even at 
the distance of miles, it should not seem incredible that 
foul spirits can magnetize also. This indeed was soon 
discovered in the power of spirits to come into mediums, 
and make them write and speak their oracles. It is 
also a curious coincidence that no one, as we are told, 
can be magnetized, or become a medium, or even be 
duly enlightened by a medium, who is uncongenial 
in his affinities, or maintains any quality of antipathy 
in his will, or temper, or character ; for then the com- 
merce sought is impossible. Beside it is remarkable 
that the persons who dabble most freely in this kind of | 
commerce, are seen, as a general fact, to run down in \ 


their virtue, lose their sense of principles, and become , / 


addled, by their familiarity with the powers of mischief. 

In these references to bad spirits, and the matter of 
demonology in general, I do not assume to have estab- 
lished any very decisive conclusion ; for the scripture 
representations can not be assumed as true, and the new 
demons of science I know nothing about, except by 
report. This only is made clear; that the suggestion 
of a condition privative in men, as regards their defense 
against the irruption of other powers, is one that can 
not be disproved by any facts within the compass of 
our knowledge. And since other powers doubtless 
exist, both good and bad, who are being sorted and 
fenced apart by the contrary affinities of character, 


116 CONCLUSION REACHED 


nothing can be more consonant to reason than that there 
must be exposures to unseen mischief in our trial, till 
these eternal fences are raised. 


We find then — this is the result of our search — that 
sin can nowise be accounted for; there are no positive 
grounds, or principles back of it, whence it may have 
come. We only discover conditions privative, that are 
involved, as necessary incidents in the begun existence 
and trial of powers. These conditions privative are in 
the nature of perils, and while they excuse nothing, for 
the law of duty is always plain, they are yet drawn so 
close to the soul and open their gulfs, on either hand, 
so deep, that our expectation of the fall is really as 
pressing as if it were determined by some law that anni- 
hilates liberty. Liberty we know is not annihilated. 
And yet we say, looking on the state of man made 
perilous, in this manner, by liberty, that we can not 
expect him to stand. 

Some persons, who are accustomed to receive the 
scriptures with great reverence and whose feeling there- 
fore is the more entitled to respect, may be disturbed 
by the apprehension that we violate what they take 
for an evidently scriptural truth concerning the good 
angels. These are finite beings, and had a begun exist- 
ence, and yet we are taught, as it will be urged, that 
they have never fallen ; showing a complete possibility 
of creating free beings, or powers that will never sin ; 
—at which point our doctrine is seen to come into open 
and direct conflict with the scriptures. 

I have no pleasure, certainly, in raising a conflict 
with any opinion not absolutely corrupt, when it has 
been so long held, and with such unquestioning defer- 
ence, by multitudes of Christian believers. But I am 


- 


THE CASE OF GOOD ANGELS 117 


obliged, by the terms of my argument, to make a re- 
vision of the evidences by which this opinion is sus- 
tained. In the Ante-Copernican conceptions of the 
universe, such an opinion was more likely to be taken 
up than now ; and it seems to be a relic of false inter- 
pretation then introduced. I find no clear evidence of 
any such opinion in the Christian scriptures. They do 
affirm the existence of good angels, who, for aught that 
appears, have all been passed through and brought up 
out of a fall, as the redeemed of mankind will be. 
They affirm the existence also of bad angels, who cer- 
tainly have not been kept from the experiment or choice 
of evil. A significant intimation is supposed to be 
found in the text, — “ To the intent that now, unto the 
principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be 
known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God ” — 
as if here, for the first time, they were to be instructed, 
by the fact of human redemption. But every thing 
manifestly turns here on the epithet “ manifold,” [7o- 
AvrrovxtAos, | which, in fact, means only diversified, not 
something new and strange ; yielding us a hint, rather, 
which runs exactly contrary to the common opinion ; 
viz., that the heavenly powers discover, only through 
the church of our world, another plan of grace and 
mercy unfolded, different from their own. In respect 
to the “ new song,” so often referred to in this connec- 
tion, it is sufficient to say that it is joined by beings 
not of our race, and is abundantly new as related to a 
work of redemption among men; different in form and 
manner, as in sphere, from any other. 

But the principal or hinge text on this subject is the 
6th verse of Jude’s epistle, — “ And the angels that kept 
not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he 
hath reserved, &c.,” —leaving the implication, it is 


118 AFFORDS NO VALID 


supposed, that other angels have kept their first estate, 
and stood fast in obedience. But this, it has been shown 
by Mr. Faber, in a full and somewhat overdone discus- 
sion,! is a totally mistaken conception of the passage. 
The term “angels,” he has shown, refers to the “sons 
of God,” whose apostasy is set forth in the 6th chapter 
of Genesis. The term apyn, rendered “first estate,” 
“as denoting a moral condition, has no such meaning in 
any known example. It signifies rather a prinetpate, or 
principality, and the representation is, that certain per- 
sons of the Sethite, or church people, growing lewd and 
dissolute in their life, went over to the corrupt Cainites 
and joined them in their vices. This also is implied in 
the phrase “left their own habitation,” [ovenrnpror, | 
their domicile, or native place and country; language 
entirely malapropos, when referred to celestial beings. 
Besides their crime was not angelic — the “ going after 
strange flesh ” —and, what is yet more stringent, their 
crime is defined by a comparison which shows exactly 
what it was—‘“ Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and 
the cities about them, in like manner, giving themselves 
over to fornication and going after strange flesh,” &c. 
And finally, to render this interpretation yet more 
certain, it is shown that Josephus, in speaking of the 
“sons of God” in Genesis, calls them angels, and uses 
the same word [apy7], principality, in describing their 
apostasy. On the whole, it does not appear that there 
/ is any vestige of authority, in scripture, for the opinion 
\ that the good angels are beings that have never sinned. 
‘ Contrary to this, there are many passages that, with- 
( out being severely pressed, might be made to indicate 
the fact that they are all redeemed spirits. Thus, 
where the desire of “angels to look into these things ” 


1 Three Dispensations, Vol. I., pp. 344-431. 


OR SCRIPTURAL OBJECTION 119 


is spoken of, an indication is given, not that they are 
unacquainted with any such fact as redemption, but 
of the contrary fact, that this appetite is whetted by 
their experience. Why should they be so eager to 
look into a matter wholly unknown? So when the 
angels break into the sky, at the advent of Christ, 
erying “ Peace on earth,” they seem to know, in their 
deepest heart’s feeling already, what this “peace” 
signifies. It is remarkable also that the one only text 
of scripture that could fairly be insisted on, as a direct 
and formal declaration of scripture on this point, is 
that of the apostle, when, extolling the universal head- 
ship of Christ, he says what appears to be directly 
contrary to all these assumptions, — “ By him to recon- | 
 cile all things unto himself, whether they be things on | 
earth, or things in heaven.” 
Falling back then upon our own first principles, as 
required by the tenor of our argument, we find that 
angels, like men, are, by the supposition, finite beings. 
If finite then are they beings who think in succession, 
one thing after another, as we do. If so, then there 
was a point in the early date, or first hours of 
their existence, when they had thought little and had 
little experience, and of course knew as little as they 
had thought. And so, given the fact of their finite 
and begun existence, it seems to follow as a conclusion, 
that they were in the same weakness, or condition priv- 
ative, with us. What then can we judge, but that, 
probably, there is some ground-principle, or law, com- 
mon both to them and to us, that involves them in the 
same fortunes with us, and requires a method of 
training and redemption analogous to that which is 
ordained for men? God, as we all agree, is a being 
who works by system—with a glorious variety and 


120 NOT IMPLIED THAT SIN 


yet by system —and it would be singular for his plan 
to break down in some little department like ours, 
and go straight forward to its mark, in other and 
better-contrived parts of his creation. How much 
better and more consonant also to our feeling to sup- 
pose that there is some antecedent necessity, inherent 
in the conception of finite and begun existences, that, 
in their training as powers, they should be passed 
through the double experience of evil and good, fall 
and redemption. 

At the same time I am not anxious to carry my 
argument so far; and I readily concede that it might 
be presumptuous to insist on such a conclusion, as 
being one of the known truths. I only ask that a 
similar concession be allowed, on the other side, as 
regards an opinion certainly not authenticated by 
scripture; for, when that is taken out of the way, as 
being a scriptural objection to my argument, I have 
no longer any concern with it. It may not be amiss 
to add, further, that what I have here advanced, in a 
somewhat positive form, concerning sin, I value mostly 
as an hypothesis. Indeed what we want, to clear our 
difficulties here, is not so much a doctrine, as to find 
that some rational hypothesis is possible. And my 
object is sufficiently gained when that is admitted. 

If it should be objected that my doctrine, or hypothe- 
sis here, is only another version of the scheme that 
accounts for sin as being the necessary means of the 
greatest good, it is enough to answer that I see no great 
reason to be concerned for it, even if it were. Still I 
do not perceive that it proposes to account for sin as 
being a means of any thing. It makes much of the 
knowledge of sin, or of its bitter consequences, and es- 
pecially of the want of that knowledge, save as it is 


IS ANY MEANS OF GOOD 121 


gotten by the bad experience itself. But the knowledge 
of sin is, in fact, knowing — that is the precise point of 
it — that it is the means of nothing good, that it is evil 
in all its tendencies, relations, operations, and results, 
and will never bring any thing good to any being. If 
then the knowing of sin to be the possible means of no 
good is itself a means of good, wherein does it appear 
that I am reproducing the doctrine that sin is the nec- 
essary means of the greatest good? Because, it may 
be answered, sin, as a fact of consciousness, is by the 
supposition the necessary means of the knowledge of 
sin. But that, I reply, is a trick of argument practiced 
on the word means. Undoubtedly sin, as a fact of con- 
sciousness, is the necessary subject of the knowledge of 
sin. If it were affirmed that the knowledge of certain 
sunken rocks, in the track of some voyage, is necessary 
to a safe passage, how easy to show, by just the argu- 
ment here employed, that, since the rocks are a neces- 
sary means of the knowledge of the rocks, the rocks are 
therefore, and by necessary consequence, the necessary 
means of a safe passage ! 


There is still another point, the existence of Satan, 
or the devil, and the account to be made of him, which 
is always intruded upon discussions of this nature, and 
can not well be avoided. God, we have seen, might 
create a realm of things and have it stand firm in its 
order ; but, if he creates a realm of powers, a prior 
and eternal certainty confronts him, of their outbreak 
in evil. And at just this point, we are able, it may be, 
to form some just or not impossible conception of the 
diabolical personality. According to the Manichees or 
disciples of Zoroaster, a doctrine virtually accepted by 
many philosophers, two principles have existed together 


122 THE TRUE CONCEPTION 


from eternity, one of which is the cause of good and the 
other of evil ; and by this short process they make out 
their account of evil. With sufficient modifications, 
their account is probably true. Thus if their good prin- 
ciple, called God by us, is taken as a being, and their 
bad principle, as only a condition privative ; one as a 
positive and real cause, the other as a bad possibility 
that environs God from eternity, waiting to become a 
fact and certain to become a fact, whenever the oppor- 
tunity is given, it is even so. And then it follows that, 
the moment God creates a realm of powers, the bad 
possibility as certainly becomes a bad actuality, a Satan, 
or devil, im esse ; not a bad omnipresence over against 
God, and his equal—that is a monstrous and hor- 
rible conception — but an outbreaking evil, or empire 
of evil in created spirits, according to their order. 
For Satan, or the devil, taken in the singular, is not 
the name of any particular person, neither is it a per- 
sonation merely of temptation, or impersonal evil, as 
many insist; for there is really no such thing as imper- 
sonal evil in the sense of moral evil; but the name is a 
name that generalizes bad persons or spirits, with their 
bad thoughts and characters, many in one. That there 
_ is any single one of them who, by distinction or pre- 
eminence, is called Satan, or devil, is wholly improbable. 
The name is one taken up by the imagination to desig- 
nate or embody, in a conception the mind can most 
easily wield, the all or total of bad minds and powers. 
Even as Davenport, the ablest theologian of all the 
New England Fathers, represents, in his Catechism ; 
answering carefully the question,—‘ What is the 
devil?” — thus: “The multitude of apostate angels 
which, by pride, and blasphemy against God, and malice 
against man, became liars and murderers, by tempting 
him to that sin.” 


OF SATAN OR THE DEVIL 123 


There is also a further reason for this general unify- 
ing of the bad powers in one, or under one conception, 
in the fact that evil, once beginning to exist, inevitably 
becomes organic, and constructs a kind of principate or 
kingdom opposite to God. It is with all bad spirits, 
doubtless, as with us. Power is taken by the strongest, 
and weakness falls into a subordinate place of servility 
and abjectness. Pride organizes caste, and dominates 
in the sphere of fashion. Corrupt opinions, false judg- 
ments, bad manners, and a general body of convention- 
alisms that represent the motherhood of sin, come into 
vogue and reign. And so, doubtless, every where and 
in all worlds, sin has it in its nature to organize, mount 
_ into the ascendant above God and truth, and reign in 
a kingdom opposite to God. And, in this view, evil is 
fitly represented in the scripture as organizing itself 
under Satan, or the devil, or the prince of this world, 
or the prince of the power of the air;—no puling 
fiction of superstition, as many fancy, but, rightly con- 
ceived, a grand, massive, portentous, and even tremen- 
dous reality. For though it be true that no such bad 
omnipresence is intended in the term Satan as some 
appear to fancy, there is represented in it an organiza- 
tion of bad mind, thought, and power, that is none the 
less imperial as regards resistance. 

At just this point many fall into the easy mistake of 
supposing that the bad organization finds its head in a 
particular person or spirit, who has all other bad spirits 
submissive and loyal under his will, and is called Satan 
as being their king. But they press the analogy too 
far, overlooking the fact that evil is as truly and eter- 
nally anarchy as organization. It is much better to 
understand, as in reference to bad spirits, what we know 
holds good in respect to the organic force of evil here 


124 THE TRUE CONCEPTION 


among men. Evil is a hell of oppositions, riots, usur- 
pations, in itself, and bears a front of organization only 
as against good. It never made a chief that it would 
not shortly dethrone, never set up any royal Nimrod 
or family of Nimrods it would not sometime betray, or 
expel. That the organic force of evil therefore has 
ever settled the eternal supremacy of some one spirit 
called devil, or Satan, is against the known nature of 
evil. There is no such order, allegiance, loyalty, faith, 
in evil as that. The stability of Satan and his empire 
consists, not in the force of some personal chieftainship, 
but in the fixed array of all bad minds, and even of 
anarchy itself, against what is good. 

As regards the naming process by which this devil, 
or Satan, is prepared, we may easily instruct ourselves 
by other analogies; such, for example, as “the man 
of sin,” and “anti-christ.” These are the names, evi- 
dently, of no particular person. “The man of sin” 
is in fact all the men of sin, or the spirit that works 
in them; for the conception is that, as Christ has 
brought forth a gospel, so it is inevitable that sin will 
foul that gospel in the handling, and be a mystery of 
iniquity upon it. And this mystery of iniquity, as Paul 
saw, was already beginning to work, as work it must, 
till it is taken out of the way. And this working is to 
be the revelation of evil through the gospel, and of the 
gospel through evil. It includes the dogmatic usur- 
pation, the priestly assumptions, the mock sacraments, 
and all the church idols, brought in as improvements — 
every thing contributed to, and interwoven with, the 
gospel, by sin as a miracle of iniquity. When that pro- 
cess is carried through, the gospel will be understood ; 
not before. It is also noticeable that what the deyil, or 
Satan, is to God as a spirit, that also anti-christ is to 


OF SATAN OR THE DEVIL 125 


Christ, the incarnate God-man. Anti-christ is, in fact, 
the devil of Christianity, as Satan is the devil of the 
Creation and Providence. As the devil too is singled 
out and made eminent by the definite article, so is anti- 
christ spoken of in the singular as one person. And 
then, again, as there are many devils spoken of, so also 
it is declared that “‘now there are many anti-christs.” 

Satan then is a bad possibility, eternally existing prior 
to the world’s creation, becoming, or emerging there 
into, a bad actuality — which it is the problem of Jeho- 
vah’s government to master. For it has been the plan 
of God, in the creation and training of the powers, so to 
bring them on, as to finally vanquish the bad possibility 
or necessity that environed him before the worlds were 
made; so to create and subjugate, or, by his love, re- 
generate the bad powers loosened by his act of creation, 
as to have them in eternal dominion. And precisely 
here is he seen in the grandeur of his attitude. We 
might yield to some opinion of his weakness, when pon- 
dering the dark fatality by which he is encompassed in 
the matter of evil; but when we see his plan distinctly 
laid, as a fowler’s when he sets his net; that he is dis- 
appointed by nothing, and that all his counsels unfold 
in their appointed time and order, as when a general 
marches on his army in a course of victory ; that he sets 
good empire against evil empire, and, without high 
words against his adversary, calmly proceeds to accom- 
plish a system of order that comprehends the subjuga- 
tion of disorder, what majesty and grandeur invest his 
person! Nothing which he could have done by omnipo- 
tence, no silent peace of compulsion, no unconsenting 
order of things, made fast by his absolute will, could 
have given any such impression of his greatness and 
glory, as this loosening of the possibility of evil, in the 


126 GOD’S PLAN REACHING ON TO VICTORY 


purpose finally to turn it about by his counsel and 
transform it by his goodness and patience. What sig- 
nificance and sublimity is there, holding such a view, in 
the ecstatic words of Christ, when just about to finish 
his work—‘“I beheld Satan as lightning fall from 
heaven!” Nor any the less when his prophet testifies 
after him —“ And the great dragon was cast out, that 
old serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth 
the whole world.” ‘Now is come salvation, and 
strength, and the kingdom of our Lord and of his 
Christ.” 

That salvation, strength, and kingdom, be it also ob- 
served, are not patches of mending laid upon the rent 
garment of a broken plan, but issues and culminations 
of the eternal plan itself. The cross of redemption is 
no after-thought, but is itself the grand all-dominating 
idea around which the eternal system of God crystal- 
lizes; Jesus Christ, the “appointed heir of all things” 
— “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” 
Here stands out the final end or cause of all things, 
here emerge the powers made strong and glorious. 
Weak, at first, unperfect, incomplete, they are now com- 
pleted and glorified — complete in him, who is the head 
of all principality and power. 


CHAPTER V 
THE FACT OF SIN 


WE have been discussing the question of evil as a 
question of possibility, probability, prospect; we now 
come down to the question of fact —is it, or is it not a 
fact that sin exists? 

But in passing to this question, it appears to be re- 
quired of us to state the object we have in it, and also to 
indicate, in advance, at the stage we have now reached, 
the course or drift of our argument. We propose then 
to show, first of all, the fact of sin. This being estab- 
lished, we shall next go into a computation or inspection 
of the effects of sin, and show that it is followed and ~ 
must be by a general disturbance or collapse of nature ; 
what we call nature being, in fact, a state of unnature _. 
induced by the penal or retributive action of causes pro- 
voked by sin. Hence, unless disorder and frustration 
are to be eternal, a second higher movement is required, , 
having force to restore the lapse of nature; which 
higher movement is the supernatural work of grace and 
redemption. In this view the unity itself of the system 
of God comprehends, it will be seen, two ranges of 
existence and operative force; nature and the super- 
natural; both complementary to each other; while the 
latter comprising the powers, and all divine agencies 
exerted in their restoration, and containing all the last 
ends and highest workings and only perfect results of 

127 


128 THE FACT OF SIN 


God’s plan, is, by the supposition, chief above the other ; 
having that to serve its uses, and be the organ of its 
exercise. The creation therefore is made for Chris- 
tianity, and without that as a kingdom supernatural, 
the kingdom of nature is only an absurd and fragmen- 
tary existence, having no significance or end. The 
argument will lead me, of course, to an examination 
of some of the supernatural facts, or supposed facts, 
of Christianity. 

- I am well aware of the necessary obscurity of this 
statement, but as it is offered rather to indicate the 
course, than to convey any sufficient impression, of 
the argument proposed, I hope it may at least satisfy 
the purpose intended. 

I begin then with the question, whether it is a real 
and proper fact that sin exists. In discussing this 
question, I abstain altogether from any close theologic 
definition of sin. Undoubtedly there is something 
called sim in the Christian writings, which is not action, 
or wrong-doing ; something not included in the Pela- 
gian definitions of sin, as commonly presented. But 
my argument requires me to look no farther at present 
than to this, which is the simplest conception of the 
subject ; inquiring whether there is any such thing in 
the world as properly blamable action? Is there a 
transgression of right, or of law, a positive disobedi- 
ence to God —any thing that rationally connects with 
remorse, or carries the sense of guilt as a genuine 
reality ? Of course it is implied that the transgressor 
does what no mere thing, nothing in the line of cause 
and effect, can do—acts against God; or, what is 
nowise different, against the constituent harmony of 
things issued from the will of God. Hence the bad 
conscience, the sense of guilt or blame; that the 


THE FACT OF SIN 129 


wrong-doer recognizes in the act something from 
himself, that is not from any mere principle of nature, 
not from God, contrary to God. 

It appears, in one view, to be quite idle to raise this 
question. Why should we undertake the serious dis- 
cussion of a question that every man has settled; why 
argue for a fact that every man acknowledges? It 
would indeed be quite nugatory, if all mankind could 
definitely see what they acknowledge. But they do 
not, and, what is more, many are abundantly ingenious 
to escape doing it. In fact all the naturalism of our 
day begins just here, in the denial, or disguised dis- 
allowance of this self-evident and every where visible 
fact, the existence of sin. Sometimes, where no such 
denial is intended or thought of, it is yet virtually 
made, in the assumption of some theory, or supposed 
principle of philosophy, which, legitimately carried out, 
conducts and will conduct other minds also to the formal 
denial, both of the fact of sin, and of that responsibility 
which is its necessary precondition. We have thus a 
large class holding the condition of implicit naturalism, 
who assert what amounts to a denial of responsibility, 
and so of the possibility of sin, without denying form- 
ally the fact, or conceiving that any truth of Christian- 
ity as a supernatural religion is brought in question. 
Of these we may cite, as a prominent instance and 
example, the phrenologists, who are many of them 
disciples and earnest advocates of the Christian doc- 
trine. Still it is not difficult to see that, if human 
actions are nothing but results brought to pass or 
determined, by the ratios of so many quantities of brain 
at given points under the skull, then are they no more 
fit subjects of reward, or blame, than the motions of 
the stars, determined also by their quantities of matter. 


130 OFTEN DENIED UNDESIGNEDLY 


Thereforé some phrenologists add the conception of a 
higher nature than the pulpy quantities; a person, a 
free-will power, presiding over them and only using 
them as its incentives and instruments, but never 
mechanically determined by them. This takes phre- 
nology out of the conditions of naturalism and, for 
just the same reason and in the same breath, renders 
sin a possibility; otherwise the science, however fondly 
accepted as the ally of Christianity, (a sorry kind of ally 
at the best,) is only a tacit and implicit form of natu- 
ralism, that virtually excludes the faith of Christianity. 

On the other hand, we have met with advocates of 


_naturalism, who have not been quite able to deny the 


a , 


existence of sin, or who even assert the fact in ways of 
doubtful significance. Thus Mr. Parker, in his “ Dis- 
egurses of Religion,” having it for his main object to 
disprove the credibility of miracles and of every thing 
supernatural in Christianity, still admits in words the 
existence of sin. He even accounts it one of the merits 
of Calvinistic and Lutheran orthodoxy that it “shows 
(we quote his own language) the hatefulness of sin 
and the terrible evils it brings upon the world; ”? and, 
what is yet more decisive, he represents it as being one 
of the faults of the moderate school of Protestants, that 
‘they reflect too little on the evil that comes from vio- 
lating the law of God.”? And yet the whole matter 
of supernaturalism, which he is discussing, hinges on 
precisely this and nothing else; viz., the question 
whether there is any such thing as a real “ violation of 
the law of God,” any “ hatefulness in sin,” any “ terri- 
ble evils brought on the world” by means of it. For 
to violate the law of God is itself an act supernatural, 
out of the order of nature, and against the order of 


1 Discourses of Religion, p. 453. 2Tb., p. 465. 


AMBIGUOUS DOCTRINE OF MR. PARKER 131 


nature, as truly even as a miracle, else it is nothing. 
The very sin of the sin is that it is against God, and 
every thing that comes from God; the acting of a soul, 
or power, against the constituent frame of nature and 
its internal harmony, followed, therefore, as in due time 
we shall show, by a real disorder of nature, which noth- 
ing but a supernatural agency of redemption can ever 
effectually repair. Of this, the fundamental fact on 
which, in reality, the whole question he is discussing 
turns, he takes no manner of notice. Admitting the 
existence of sin, his speculations still go on their way, 
as if it were a fact of no significance in regard to his 
argument. If he had sounded the question of sin more 
deeply, ascertaining what it is and what it involves, he 
might well enough have spared himself the labor of his 
book. He either would never have written it at all, 
or else he would have denied the existence of sin alto- 
gether, as being only a necessary condition of the 
supernatural. 

And we are the more confirmed .in the opinion that 
his denial of supernaturalism begins in a state of mental 
ambiguity respecting sin, from the fact that exactly this 
ambiguity is manifested in his work itself. Thus, when 
speaking of the wrongs and the oppressive inequalities 
discovered in the distributions of society, he refers 
them, if we understand him rightly, to causes in human 
nature, not to the will, in its abuse or breach of nature. 
He says,—‘ We find the root of all in man himself. 
In him is the same perplexing antithesis which we meet 
inallhisworks. These conflicting things existed as ideas 
in him, before. they took their present concrete shape. 
Discordant causes [in his nature we understand] have 
produced effects not harmonious. Out of man these 
institutions have grown; out of his passions or his 


132 AMBIGUOUS DOCTRINE OF MR. PARKER 


judgment, his senses or his soul. Taken together they 
are the exponent which indicates the character and 
degree of development the race has now attained.”? 
Out of his passions or his judgment, his senses or his 
soul! Whence then did they come? for this appears 
to be a little ambiguous. And what if it should hap- 
pen that they came out of neither—out of no ground, 
or cause in nature whatever, but out of the will as a 
power transcending nature? If these bitter wrongs of 
society, such as war, slavery, and the like, which Mr. 
Parker has so often denounced in terms so nearly vio- 
lent, kindling, as it were, a hell of words in which to 
burn them before the time ; if these bitter wrongs are 
nothing but developments of “discordant causes” in 
human nature, then wherein are they to be blamed ? 
“Violations of the law of God!” Do God’s own causes 
violate his law? Bringing “terrible evils on the 
world!” How upon the world, when God himself has 
put the evils in it, as truly as he has put the legs of a 
frog in the tadpole out of which it grows? “ Hateful- 
ness of sin!” Is the mere development of God’s own 
constituted works and causes hateful? Is the dog-star 
morally hateful because it rises in July? 

But the advocates of naturalism are commonly more 
thorough and consistent; not consistent with each 
other, that is too much to be expected, but consistent 
with themselves, in trying each to find some way of 
disallowing sin, or so far explaining it away, as to re- 
duce it within the terms of mere cause and effect in 
nature. Thus, for example, Fourier conceives that 
what we call sin, by a kind of misnomer, is predicable 
only of society, not of the individual man. Considered 
as creatures of God, all men, as truly as the first man 


1 Discourses of Religion, p. 12. 


ASSUMPTION OF FOURIER 133 


before sin, have and continue always to have a right 
and perfect nature, in the same manner as the stars. 
He accordingly assumes it as the fundamental principle 
of the new science that,—‘ Man’s attractions,” like 
theirs, ‘‘are proportioned to his destinies ;” so that, 
by means of his passions, he will even gravitate natu- 
rally toward the condition of order and well-being, with 
the same infallible certainty as they. It only happens 
that society is not fitly organized, and that produces all 
the mischief. There really is no sin, apart from the 
fact that men have not had the science to organize 
society rightly. He does not appear to notice the fact 
that if these human stars, called men, are all harmoni- 
ously tempered and set in a perfect balance of inward 
attractions, by them to be swayed under the laws of 
cause and effect, that fact 7s organization, the very 
harmony of the spheres itself. And then the assump- 
tion that society is not fitly organized, or badly disor- 
ganized, is simply absurd; not less absurd the hope 
that man is going to scheme it into organization him- 
self. Doubtless society is badly enough organized, but 
we have no place for the fact and can have none till we 
look on men as powers, not under cause and effect; 
capable, in that manner, of sin, and liable to it ; through 
the bad experiment of it, to be trained up into character, 
which is itself the completed organization of felicity. 
Under this view bad organization, or disorganization, is 
possible, because sin is possible; and will be a fact, as 
certainly as sin is a fact — otherwise neither possible, 
nor a fact. 

But as we are dismissing, in this manner, the incon- 
sequent and baseless theory of Fourier, there comes up, 
on the other side, exactly opposite to him, the very cele- 
brated theologian of naturalism, Dr. Strauss, who in- 


134 DENIAL OF DR. STRAUSS 


verts the main point of Fourier, charging all the misdo- 
ings and miseries of the human state, commonly called 
sins, on the individual, leaving society blameless and 
even perfect. Finding the word sim asserting a right- 
ful place in human language, he is not so unphilosophi- 
cal as to insist on its being cast out; on the contrary, 
he even speaks of “the sinfulness of human nature”; 
but by this he understands only that individuals must 
needs suffer so much of personal mischief and defect, 
in a way of carrying on the historic development of the 
race. In this view he says, — ‘ Humanity [7.e., taken 
as a whole,] is the sinless existence ; for the course of 
its development is a blameless one; pollution cleaves to 
the individuals only, and does not touch the race and its 
history.” ‘Sinful human nature” turns out, in this 
manner, to be the “sinless existence.” The individuals 
whom we call “sinners” and regard as under “ pollu- 
tion” are yet seen to be “blameless” sinners; so in- 
geniously “polluted” that the pollution which infects 
all the individuals does not once touch the race! If 
there be any miracle in supernaturalism more wonderful . 
than this, let us be informed where it is. The truth 
appears to be that Dr. Strauss could not formally deny 
the fact of sin, and yet had no place for it. He 
threw it, therefore, into a limbo of ambiguities, where 
he could recognize it as a fact, and yet make nothing 
of it. 

Still there is so much of ingenuity in this method of 
getting rid of sin, the absurdity of it is disguised under 
so fine a show of philosophy, that much weaker and less 
cultivated men than Dr. Strauss anticipated him in it, 
and, without knowing, as well as he, what their wise say- 
ing meant, were as greatly pleased as he with the plausible 
air of it. Pope rhymes it thus, a hundred ways, that, — 


THE POPULAR LITERATURE 135 


“ Respecting man, whatever wrong we call, 
May, must be right, as relative to all.” 


The popular literature of our time, represented by 
such writers as Carlyle and Emerson, is in a similar 
vein ; not always denying sin, for to lose it would be to 
lose the spice and spirit of half their representations of 
humanity ; but contriving rather to exalt and glorify it, 
by placing both it and virtue upon the common footing 
of a natural use and necessity. Glorifying also them- 
- selves in the plausible audacity of their offense ; for it 
is one of the frequent infirmities of literature that it 
courts effect by taking on the airs of licentiousness. 

But this kind of originality has now come to its limit 
or point of reaction ; for, when licentiousness becomes 
a theory, regularly asserted, and formally vindicated, it 
is then no better than truth. The poetry is gone, and 
it dies of its own flatness. Thus we have seen a volume 
recently issued from the American press, the formal 
purpose of which is to show, even as a Christian fact, 
the blamelessness of sin; nay more, that the main 
object of Jesus Christ in his mission of love, is to dis- 
abuse the world of the imposture, deliver it of the | 
terrible nightmare of sin. Not to deliver it of sin itself | 
—that is a mistake — but to deliver it of the conviction | 
of sin, as an illusive and baleful mistake gendered by / 
the superstition of the world! If anything can be ; 
taken for a certain proof that mankind are infatuated 
by some strange illusion, such as sin alone may breed, 
it would seem to be the fact itself that they are able to 
. impose upon themselves and one another, by these 
feeble perversities that, despite of all the best known, 
best attested facts of life, contrive to put on still the 
airs of science and maintain the pretenses of reason. 


136 APPEAL TO OBSERVATION 


Passing on from these oppositions of science, falsely 
so called, let us refer to some of the formal proofs that 
sin is an existing fact. Scripture authority is out of 
the question, which we do not regret ; for the practical 
and palpable evidences that meet us in the simple in- 
spection of humanity itself are abundantly sufficient. 

The question here, it will be observed, is not whether 
men are totally depraved, or depraved at all; nor 
whether they sin continually ; but simply whether they 
do actually sin ; — whether, in fact, sin exists. Nor is 
it implied that all sins are equally blamable ; for, be- 
yond a question, great numbers of persons are steeped in 
contaminating influences from their earliest childhood, 
and pass into life under the heaviest loads of moral dis- 
advantage. Regarding their acts, nothing is sin tosuch, 
but what they do as sin. The object we have in view 
is sufficiently answered by the adequate proof of asingle 
sin; for the argument of naturalism goes the length 
of denying all sin, even the possibility of sin ; so that 
if one man is able, as a power, to break out of nature and 
do a sin against it, the whole theory is dissolved. The 
power of liberty that can do one sin, can do more; 
and if only one man has it, he must either be a miracle 
himself, or else other men can do the same. 


We begin with an appeal to observation, alleging as a 
fact that we do, by inevitable necessity, impute blame 
to acts of injury done us by others. We can as easily 
avoid making a shadow in the sun, as we can avoid a 
sentiment of blame, when we are designedly injured 
by a fellow-man. We do it, not as a pettish child may 
pelt a thistle on which he has trodden, not in any dis- 
possessed state or momentary fit of anger, but even after 
years of reflection have passed away; nay after we have 


APPEAL TO OBSERVATION 137 


bathed the wrong done us, for so long a time, in the 
cleansing waters of forgiveness. Still we condemn the 
wrong and must, as long as we exist ; our forgiveness 
itself implies that we do; for what is there to be for- 
given, if there be nothing that we condemn? ‘Thus, if 
there be two partners in trade, and one of them absconds 
with all the profits and funds of the establishment, 
leaving the other, with his family, victims to the com- 
mon liabilities, and to a necessary doom, for life, of 
poverty ; by what art can either he, or they, ever man- 
age to eradicate their sense of wrong, or the blame they 
impute to the perfidious man whose crime has been the 
despoiler of their life? They may forgive him, they 
may follow him with their prayers to the hour of his 
last breath, but they will pray as for a guilty man, 
whose crime is the bitterness of his life,.as it has been 
the burden of theirs. 

Suppose now they turn philosophers and make the 
discovery that there is no sin, that all actions take place 
under the necessary law of cause and effect, and man- 
age to smooth over, with this fine apology, all the crimes 
they hear of in the world; still that one man that 
robbed them of their all—how stubborn a fact is he, 
how unreducible to theirtheory! His very name means 
all that sin ever means, and they can as easily tear out 
their own heart-strings, as they can empty that name 
of the blame it signifies. 

Or suppose a man writes a book, the precise object of 
which is to show that there is, and can be no such thing 
as sin, and then that his work is assaulted, as he thinks, 
with unfair representations and malicious constructions, 
what will you more certainly see, than that he is out 
immediately against his accusers, in the most violent 
denunciations of their bigotry, and the wicked untruths 


~ 


138 APPEAL TO CONSCIOUSNESS 


of their criticism? Now, if the book was true, if there 
is no sin that is blamable, what have they done to be so 
bitterly blamed? What they have done is simply nat- 
ural, and is no more to be condemned than a frosty — 
night. It will nowise diminish the force of our suppo- 
sition to add that it might well enough be given as 
historic fact. In which, also, we may see how certainly 
every man’s rational and moral instincts will triumph, 
after all, over his theories and formal arguments, when 
he undertakes to deny or disprove the fact of sin. 

We go farther. So confident are we in this matter 
that, if there be any man living who undertakes to be 
consistent in the denial of sin, setting it down however 
firmly, as a point of will, never to blame any injury 
done to others or to himself, we will engage, in case he 
is able to spend four waking hours without any single 
thought or feeling of blame as against any human crea- 
ture, to admit the truth of his doctrine. 


We have another proof, in the fact that we as posi- 
tively and necessarily blame ourselves; not in every 
thing — my argument does not require me to go that 
length — enough that we do it on particular occasions, 
distinctly noted and remembered. And here we are bold 
to affirm that every person of a mature age, and in his 
right mind, remembers turns, or crises in his life, where 
he met the question of wrong face to face, and by a 
hard inward struggle broke through the sacred convic- 
tions of duty that rose up to fence him back. It was 
some new sin to which he had not become familiar, so 
much worse perhaps in degree as to be the entrance to 
him consciously of a new stage of guilt. He remembers 
how it shook his soul and even his body, how he shrunk 
in guilty anticipation from the new step of wrong; the 


APPEAL TO CONSCIOUSNESS 139 


sublime misgiving that seized him, the awkward and 
but half-possessed manner in which it was taken, and 
then afterward, perhaps even after years have passed 
away, how, in some quiet hour of the day or wakeful 
hour of night, as the recollection of that deed—nota 
public crime, but a wrong, or an act of vice— returned 
upon him, the blood rushed back for the moment on his 
fluttering heart, the pores of his skin opened, and a kind 
of agony of shame and self-condemnation, in one word, 
of remorse, seized his whole person. This is the con- 
sciousness, the guilty pang, of sin; every man knows 
what it is. 

We have also observed this peculiarity in such experi- 
ences; that it makes no difference at all what tempta- 
tions we were under; we probably enough do not even 
think of them; our soul appears to scorn apology, as if 
some higher nature within, speaking out of its eternity, 
were asserting its violated rights, chastising the insult 
done to its inborn affinities with immutable order and 
divinity, and refusing to be farther humbled by the low 
pleadings of excuse and disingenuous guilt. To say, at 
such a time, the woman tempted me, I was weak, I was 
beguiled, I was compelled by fear and overcome, signifies 
nothing. The wrong was understood, and that suffices. 

Nor is it only in these times of conscious compunction 
- that we are seen to blame ourselves as transgressors. 
We do it tacitly or unconsciously, in ways that are even 
more striking. Thus it may be seen that large assem- 
blies of men, not the worst of their species, not the 
ignorant or the broken-spirited victims of depression, 
not the felons or outcasts of society, but the most intel- 
ligent, most honest and honorable, and generally most 
exemplary as regards their conduct, will come together 
once in seven days, and sit down to the exposure and 


140 APPEAL TO CONSCIOUSNESS - 


charge of their sin, without even a thought of offense or 
insult. And what is more, that kind of preaching which 
probes them most faithfully, and most disturbs their 
consciences, will most invite their attendance, if only 
there is no violence, or fanaticism in the manner. Any 
sober and rational exposure of their sin, however pierc- 
ing, they will submit to, take it as their privilege, and 
pay for it cheerfully, year by year! Why now is this? 
Simply because they are sinners and know the charge 
to be true. Were they charged in this manner with 
being thieves, pickpockets, or assassins, all husbands and 
wives arraigned as false, all children as parricides, all 
citizens as perjurers and traitors, all merchants and 
bankers as dishonest and fraudulent dealers, they would 
instantly repel the charge; their indignation could not 
be restrained for a moment. Nor is it any thing to say 
that they have been educated into the faith that they 
are transgressors, living in the guilt of sin, and submit 
to the charge as to one of their superstitions. It is not 
as being a dogma that the charge has any reality to 
them ; indeed they often repel it as such and deny it. 
It has never any power till it is wielded in such a man- 
ner as to stir the consciousness, and draw out thence a 
fresh verdict of conviction. 

We do then blame ourselves. It is one of the most 
real and tremendous facts of our consciousness; which, 
if a man will seek to explain away, by resolving it into 
cause and effect, it will yet remain, defying and scorn- 
ing all his arguments. He knows that he himself did 
the sin, and no cause back of himself. It is a fact, 
self-pronounced in his consciousness, and of which he 
can no more divest himself than he can stay the con- 
sciousness of his existence. Chloroform may rid him 
of it, but not argument. | 


INDICATIONS SHOW CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN 141 


Again, it is a fact constantly perceived that, where 
men do not occupy themselves with thoughts of blame, 
or conscious admissions of guilt, they are yet exercised 
in ways that imply it, and prove it only the more con- 
vincingly. The moment we look out upon the race, 
and take note of mankind, as revealed in their most 
superficial demonstrations, we discover that they are 
out of rest, plagued by the foul demon of guilt. A 
malefactor aspect invests their conduct. Not by altars 
only of sacrifice, smoking under every sky; not by pil- 
grimages, abstinences, vigils, flagellations of the body, 
self-immolations, and other voluntary tortures; not by 
the giving way even of natural affection before this 
dreadful horror of the mind, yielding up the children 
of the body to pacify the sins of the soul — not by 
these misdirected expedients and pains of guilt alone 
do we discover its existence, but by others, more silent 
and convincing. 

Take, for a single example, the remarkable fact of a 
universal shyness of God —a fact conceded by society, 
and made the basis even of a common law of politeness. 
Why is this, why is it accepted as a universal law of 
politeness, never to obtrude upon others the subject of 
religion, or of God and the soul, without some previous 
intimation or discovery that the subject will not be un- 
welcome? Because it is presumed not to be welcome. 
It is not because God and the soul are questionable 
realities we love to converse of things unreal, or 
imaginary, as well as of those which are real. It is 
not because, being real, they are matters about which 
there are many different opinions —so there are about 
politics, literature, philosophy, science, art, and almost 
every other subject. It is not because, being real, God 
is not the loftiest, purest and, in himself, most ennobling, 


142 THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN 


most inspiring, most radiant subject of communication ; 
his government the richest fountain of wisdom; and 
the soul an interest to itself that dwarfs all others. 
Neither is it because a population of pure, angelic 
intelligences, occupying this same world of ours, and 
immersed in similar employments, would not meet the 
vision of God in all his works, and would not hasten to 
refresh themselves in these transcendent themes. The 
only and true explanation is that God and the soul are 
themes that move disturbance. They suggest blame, 
they lacerate, in this manner, the comfort of the mind. 
So well understood is it that mankind are shy of God, 
and that humanity is itself the sign of a bad conscience, 
that it is tacitly voted and becomes an accepted law of 
politeness, never to approach this one proscribed sub- 
ject, without a previous discovery that it can be done 
without offense. 

Nor is it any excuse or clearance of the sign, to say 
that manifestly such subjects ought not to be promiscu- 
ously spoken of in all places and circles. This we 
admit. ‘Still the question is, why they may not? And 
the only answer is, that which we have given; that 
men are under a subtle and tacit, but damning sense of 
blame, and can not bear, on all occasions, or any where 
but in the public assemblies of religion, to have subjects 
introduced that remind them of it, and stir again the 
guilt of their conscience. There would never be any 
such places or occasions, in a population of sinless beings. 

Is this tacit blame then, that appears to haunt the 
world, and drive it from its rest, a mere fiction? Are 
we still under cause and effect, as truly as a river flow- 
ing toward the ocean, only not able ourselves to dis- 
cover the fact? Bitter hardship, that we can not be 
allowed the placidity of the river! 


WE ACT ON THE ASSUMPTION 143 


We have yet another proof, in the fact that mankind 
are seen to be acting universally on the assumption, that 
wrong is done, or is likely to be done in the world. 
Every man of business, having only ordinary intelli- 
gence, assumes it as a point of natural discretion, that 
he is beset with wrong-doers, who will take every 
advantage and seize every opportunity, and holds it as a 
first maxim to trust no man, till he has somehow given 
a title to confidence. Not that men are generally weak, 
and prone to what is miscalled wrong, by reason of 
their natural infirmity. Contrary to this, it is the very 
point of his concern, that they are so capable and so 
ready to be wicked in the use of their capacity. The 
smallest part of his concern is to look out for such as 
may fail him by their lack of energy or talent, and 
these are a class by themselves. To guard against the 
others is his principal study, and they are so many, so 
greedy, and plausible, and false, and hasten to the 
prey by so many methods, that his only safety is in the 
presumption that every man will take advantage and 
do him a wrong if he can. 

So, in what is called family government, every thing 
is set upon a footing that anticipates wrong. Other- 
wise we might exist in a family state and never hear or 
think of a government as pertaining to it, any more 
than we now do of a government in the garden, to pre- 
side over the conduct of the flowers. Indeed, if there 
is no danger of wrong-doing in children, the forming 
of perverse tempers, the indulgence of wicked passions, 
the breaking down, by wills unchastened, of all sacred 
principles, why not suffer them to unfold naturally, as 
the flowers do; for even inexperience and neglect will 
as certainly blossom into virtue, if virtue it can be 
called, as they into their own odors and colors. Con- 


144 THAT WRONGS ARE A GREAT PERIL 


trary to this, we assume the need of government, that 
is, of authority, command, correction, that the begin- 
‘nings of evil may be checked, and principles of virtue 
established. Doubtless there is such a thing as un- 
righteous and barbarous severity practiced in the name 
of government; still there must be government; for 
whatever parent undertakes to act on the assumption 
that the misdoing will be only mistake, or inexperience, 
and no intended or blamable wrong, (as we understand 
some are now doing, in order to justify their theories, ) 
will assuredly find that something comes to pass, in the 
history of their children, that is a great deal more like 
wrong than they could wish! 

Why, again, do we organize the civil state, why fence 
about society with laws, enforcing them by severe and 
even sanguinary punishments? If there is no blamable 
wrong in the world or danger of any, why so careful to 
defend ourselves against what our laws, by a mistake, 
call wrongs, or crimes; such as frauds, forgeries, rob- 
beries, violations of liberty, character and chastity, 
murders, assassinations? Why these manifold acts of 
penal legislation -against wrong-doing, if wrong, as a 
matter of blame, is out of the question, or if nothing 
has ever occurred in the world to suggest the fact, and 
discover the danger of wrong? The answer to all 
this will be, that what we call wrong, in this manner, is 
public evil, and must be restrained, but still is not 
really blamable, because it takes place under laws of 
nature, and by natural necessity. Are we then expect- 
ing, in this manner, to punish and put a stop to the 
laws of nature? and so to perform, by legislation, the 
miracles we deny in our arguments? What means 
this array of courts, constables, and marshals, the 
grated prisons, the hurdles and scaffolds, the solemn 


TO OUR EXISTENCE 145 


farce of trials and penal sentences? Are they simply 
barriers or institutes of defense, in which we array 
causes against the harmful action of other causes, as 
the Hollanders raise dykes against the sea? Then why 
do we call this “ criminal law” ? and why has it never 
occurred to the Hollanders to conceive that their dykes 
are raised against the criminal misdoings of the sea? 

Besides we are afraid even of the law; trying, by 
every method possible, to invent checks and balances 
against usurpations and abuses of power; so to make 
power responsible, and to hedge about even our tri- 
bunals of justice by penal enactments against bribery, 
connivance, and arbitrary contempt of law; as if want- 
ing still some defense against even our defenders, and 
the more terrible wrongs they are like to perpetrate, 
in the abuse of those powers which have been com- 
mitted to their hands. And then, again, when the 
people, groaning for long years under the misrule of a 
tyrant, rise up against him, instigated by the woes they 
have suffered, and pluck him down from his throne, 
bring him to solemn trial and sentence him to die, do 
they lay no blame on his head, or do they only cut off 
the thing, as the blameless impediment to their rights 
and liberties ? 

We perceive, in this manner, how the whole super- 
structure of the civil order rests on the conviction that 
sin is in the world. We assume it as a fact, the terrible 
fact, of human existence. No one doubts it, save here 
and there some busy Sophist, who thinks to hold his 
theories against all fact and experience, and against the 
spontaneous, practical judgments of the race — pro- 
tected, while he does it, in the very liberty of his 
mind, and the life of his body, by laws that, under his 
theories, might as well set themselves to forbid the 


146 FORGIVENESS SUPPOSES SIN 


fermentation of substances, or to arraign and punish 
the poisonous growth of vegetables. 


We have still another class of proofs, that are more 
subtle and closer to what may be called the latent sense 
of the soul; and, for just that reason, as much more 
convincing, when once they are brought into the light; 
we speak of certain sentiments that appear to be uni- 
versal, and the natural validity of which we never 
suspect. ; 

Take, for a first example, the sentiment or virtue of 
forgiveness. Does any one doubt the reality of for- 
giveness? does any one refuse to commend forgiveness 
as a necessary and even noble virtue? Forgiveness to 
what? Forgiveness to cause and effect, forgiveness 
to the weather, forgiveness to the mildew, or the fly 
that brings the blasted harvest? No! forgiveness to 
wrong, blamable and guilty wrong. Forgiveness and 
wrong are relative terms. If there is nothing to blame 
—there is nothing to forgive. One of two things, then, 
must be true; either that there has been some blamable 
wrong in the world, or else that the forgiveness we 
think of, speak of, inculcate, and commend, is a baseless 
phantom, out of all reality, as destitute of dignity and 
beauty as of solidity and truth. Indeed, there is no 
place in human language for the word, any more than 
for the naming of a sixth sense that does not exist. 

The pleasure we take in satire may be cited as another 
example. This pleasure consists in cauterizing, or see- 
ing cauterized by wit, the perverse follies, the abortive 
pride, or the absurd airs and manners of such as morally 
deserve this kind of treatment. Satire supposes a free 
and responsible subject, who might be seriously blamed, 
but can be more efficiently treated by this lighter 


SATIRE AND TRAGEDY SUPPOSE SIN 147 


method, which, instead of denouncing the guilt, plays 
off the absurdities, and mocks the sorry figure, of sin. 
Satire supposes demerit, or a blamable defect of virtue ; 
- and, where the mark is too high to be reached by rebuke 
or civil indictment, even crime may be fitly chastised 
by it. The point to be distinctly noted is, that there is no 
place for satire, and we have no sympathy with it, except 
where there is, or is supposed to be, some kind of moral 
delinquency or ill desert. No poet thinks to satirize 
the sea, or a snow-storm, or a club foot, or a monkey, 
ora fool. But he takes a man, a sinning man, who has 
deformed himself by his excesses, perversities, or crimes, 
and against him invokes the terrible Nemesis of wit and 
satire. Regarding him simply as a thing, under the 
laws of cause and effect, we should have as little satis- 
faction or pleasure in the infliction as if it were laid 
upon a falling body. 

We have yet another and sublimer illustration, in the 
abysses of the tragic sentiment— that which imparts an 
interest so profound to human history, to the novel and 
the drama, and even to the crucifixion of Jesus himself. 
The staple matter of emotion, all that so profoundly 
moves our feeling in these records of fact and fiction, is 
that here we look upon the conflict of good and bad 
powers, the glory and suffering of one, the hellish art 
and malice of the other, followed or not followed by the 
sublime vindications of providential justice. It is the 
-war, actual or imagined, of beauty and deformity, good 
and evil, in their higher examples. In this view, we 
have a deeper sense of awe, a vaster movement of feel- 
ing, in the contemplation of a man, a mere human 
creature, in a character demonized by passion, than we 
have in the rage of the sea, or the bursting fire-storm 
of a volcano; because we regard him as a power—a 


148 SATIRE AND TRAGEDY SUPPOSE SIN 


bad will doing battle with God and the world. Be it 
a Macbeth, an Othello, a Richard, a Faust, a Napoleon, 
or only the Jew Fagin, we follow him to his end, quiv- 
ering as under some bad spell, only then to breathe 
again with freedom, when the storm of his destiny is 
over, and the wild, fiery mystery that struggled in his 
passion is solved. But suppose it were to come to us, 
in the heat of our tragic exaltation, as a real conviction, 
that these characters are, after all, only natural effects, 
mere frictions of things, acting from no free power in 
themselves ; forthwith, at the instant, every feeling of 
interest vanishes, and we care no more for their petty 
tumults than we do for the effervescence of a salt, or 
the skim that mantles a pool. All tragic movement 
ceases when the powers make their exit; for, if now we 
call them men, they yet are only things, like Lion, Wall, 
and Moonshine, left to fill the stage with their absurd 
mockeries. What means it now for the Lady Macbeth 
to be crying to the blood,— “ Out, damned spot!” if 
there is no longer any such thing as a damned spot 
of guilt in her murderous soul. Expunge the faith of 
that, and the rage of her remorse turns at once to comedy 
—that, and nothing more. 

Now, in these and other like sentiments, constantly 
brought into play, spontaneous, clear of all affectation, 
never questioned as absurdities or fictions, we encounter 
some of the sublimest, most irresistible evidences that 
men are capable of sin and are in it. If it is not so, 
then it is very clear that all the deepest sentiments 
of the human bosom are only impostures of natural 
weakness, destitute of dignity as of truth. 


It remains to add that the objections offered to dis- 
prove the existence of sin, and the solutions of what is 


MISDIRECTION 149 


called sin, advanced by the naturalists, are insufficient 
and futile, and even imply the fact itself. Most of these 
have been already answered in the course of our argu- 
ment —such as that the acting of a creature against 
God is inconceivable ; for such a capacity was shown to 
be included in the very conception of a free agent, or 
power ; — that if God really desires no sin, he has all force 
to prevent it ; for a power, it was shown, is not immedi- 
ately controllable by force ; — that sin supposes a breach 
of God’s system ; for his system is a system, we have seen, 
not of things, but of powers, and maintains the organic 
nisus of its aim as perfectly among the discords it has 
undertaken to reduce and assimilate, as if no act of 
discord had occurred. Meantime it will be seen that 
the notion of evil, most commonly advanced by the 
naturalizing skeptics, is one that really involves and 
admits the guilt of sin, even though advanced to clear 
it of the element of guilt. “ Misdirection” is the word 
they apply — they call it misdirection — and in this, or 
something answering to this, they universally agree. 
Even where there is only a partially developed system 
of naturalism, and the existence of sin is not formally 
denied, a certain affinity for this word will be discov- 
ered. Thus Mr. Parker, speaking of piracy, war, and 
the slave trade, suggests that these and similar evils are 
wrongs that come of the “abuse, misdirection, and 
disease of human nature.”! This word misdirection has 
the advantage that it slips all recognition of blame or 
responsibility, because it brings into view no real agency 
or responsible agent. And hence it becomes a favorite 
word, and is formally proposed by many advocates of 
naturalism, as the philosophic synonym of sin. 

Be it so then, put it down as agreed, that sin is mis- 


1 Discourses of Religion, p. 18. 


150 MISDIRECTION, NO TRUE 


direction, and that so far there is a real something in it. 
Then comes the question, who is it, what is it, that mis- 
directs? Is the misdirection of God? That will not 
be said. Mr. Parker uses also, it will be observed, the 
term “disease.” Will it then be said that piracy, war, 
and the slave trade are the misdirections only of disease, 
as when the hand of a lunatic, misdirected by a pres- 
sure on the brain, takes the life of his friend! Was it 
only for such innocent misdirection as this that Mr. 
Parker inveighed so bitterly against the great states- 
man of New England, as having bowed himself te 
slavery ? Was it then the misdirection of cause and 
effect, in the constituent principles of human nature ? 
This indeed appears to be intimated in another place, 
when it is declared that, — “ Discordant causes have 
produced effects not harmonious.”! Is the boasted 
system then of nature a discordant, blundering, misdi- 
recting system? If so, it should not be wholly inered- 
ible that nature may sometime blunder into a miracle. 
Is it then given us, for our privilege, to look over the 
sad inventory of the world’s history, the corruptions of 
truth and religion, the bloody persecutions, the massa- 
cres of the good, the revolutions against oppressions and 
oppressors, and the combinations of power to crush 
them, if successful, caste, slavery, and the slave trade, 
piracy and war tramping in blood over desolated cities 
and empires — can we look on these and have it as our 
soft impeachment to say, that they are only the misdi- 
rections of discordant causes in human nature? That 
has never been the sense of mankind, and never can be. 
There is no account to be made of these misdirections, 
till we bring into view man as he is; a power capable 
of misdirecting himself and guilty in it because he does 


1 Discourses of Religion, p. 12. 


SYNONYM OF SIN 151 


it, swayed by no causes in or out of himself, but by his 
own self-determining will. 

Doubtless there is abundance of misdirection; almost 
every thing we know is misdirected, the world is full of 
it, the whole creation groaneth in the sorrows, wrongs, 
punishments, and pains of it. And then we have it 
as the true account of all, that man is the grand misdi- 
rector. He turns God’s world into a hell of misdirec- 
tion,and thatishis sin. Apart from this, any such thing 
as misdirection is inconceivable. Nature yields nosuch 
thing ; and, if man is a part only of nature, under her 
necessary laws of cause and effect, there will be as little 
place for misdirection in his activities, as there is in the 
laws of chemistry, or even of the solar system. The 
plea of misdirection, therefore, is itself a concession of 
the fact of sin, ‘which fact we now assume to be suffi- 
ciently established to support and be a sure foundation 
for our future argument. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN 


Ir is very evident that, if sin is a fact, it must be fol- 
lowed by important consequences ; for, as it has a moral 


‘ significance considered in the aspect of blameworthiness, 


_ 


«4 


guilt, penal desert, and remorse, so also it has a dy- 
namic force, considered as acting on the physical order 
and sphere of nature ; in the contact and surrounding 
of which its transgressions take effect. _ In one view, it 
is the fall of virtue ; in the other, it is the disorder and 
penal dislocation both of the soul and of the world. 
As crime, it demolishes the sacred and supernatural 
interests of character; as a force, operating through 
and among the retributive causes arranged for the vin- 
dication of God’s law, it is the disruption of nature, a 
shock of disorder and pain that unsettles the apparent 
harmony of things, and reduces the world to a state of 
imperfect, or questionable beauty. 

What I now propose, then, is the investigation of sin 
regarded in the latter of these two aspects ; or to show 
what consequences it operates or provokes, in the field 
of nature. 

It is not to be supposed that sin has power to annul 
or discontinue any one of the laws of nature. The 
same laws are in action after the sin, or under it, as 
before. And yet, these laws continuing the same, it is 
conceivable that sin may effect what is really, and to no 

152 


RETRIBUTIVE CONSEQUENCES 153 


small extent, a new resolution or combination, which is, 
to the ideally perfect state of nature, what disorder is 
to order, deformity to beauty, pain to peace. This, of 
course, it will do, if at all, by a force exerted in the 
material world, and through the laws of nature. 

At the point of his will, man is a force, we have seen, 
outside of nature; a being supernatural, because he is- 
able to act on the chain of cause and effect in nature 
from without the chain. It follows then, of course, 
that by acting in this manner upon nature, he can vary 
the action of nature from what would be its action, » 
were there no such thing as a force external to the 
scheme. Nature, indeed, is submitted to him, as we 
have seen, for this very purpose; to be varied in its 
action by his action, to receive and return his action, so 
to be the field and medium of his exercise. 

Thus it is a favorite doctrine of our times, that the 
laws of the world are retributive; so that every sin or 
departure from virtue will be faithfully and relentlessly 
punished. The very world, we say, is a moral economy, 
and is so arranged, under its laws, that retribution fol- 
lows at the heels of a]l sin. And by this fact of retri- 
bution, we mean that disease, pain, sorrow, deformity, 
weakness, disappointment, defeat, all sorts of groanings, 
all sizes and shapes of misery, wait upon wrong-doers, 
and, when challenged by their sin, come forth to handle 
them with their rugged and powerful discipline. We 
conceive that, in this way, the aspects of human society 
and the world are, to a considerable degree, determined. 
But we do not always observe that nature is, by the 
supposition, just so far displayed under a variation of 
disorder and disease. First appear the wrongs to be 
chastised, which are not included in the causations of 
nature, otherwise they were blameless ; then the laws 


154 SIN ALSO PRODUCES 


of nature, met by these provocations, commence a re 
tributive action, such as nature, unprovoked, would never 
display. The sin has fallen into nature as a grain of 
sand into the eye—and as the eye is the same organ 
that it was before, having the same laws, and is yet so 
far changed as to be an organ of pain rather than of 
sight, so it is with the laws of nature, in their penal and 
retributive action now begun. Sin, therefore, is, by 
the supposition, such a force as may suffice, in a society 
_ and world of sin, to vary the combinations, and display 
a new resolution of the activities, of nature. The laws 
remain, but they are met and provoked by anew ingre- 
dient not included in nature; and so the whole field of 
nature, otherwise a realm of harmony, and peace, and 
beauty, takes a look of discord, and, with many traces 
of its original glory left, displays the tokens also of a 
prison and a hospital. 

Thus far we have spoken of the power there is in 
sin to provoke a different action of natural causes. It 
also has a direct action upon nature to produce other 
conjunctions of causes, and so, other results. The 
laws all continue their action as before, but the sin 
committed varies the combinations subject to their 
action, and in that manner the order of their working. 
Indeed, we have seen that nature is, to a certain extent, 
submitted by her laws to the action of free supernatural 
agents; which implies that her action can be varied by 
their sovereignty without displacing the laws, nay in 
virtue rather of the submission they are appointed to 
enforce. I thrust my hand, for example, into the fire, 
producing thus a new conjunction of causes, viz., fire 
and the tissues of the hand; and the result corresponds 
—a state of suffering and partial disorganization. In 
doing this, I have acted only through the laws of 


NEW CONJUNCTIONS OF CAUSES 155 


nature —the nervous cord has carried down my man- 
date to the muscles of the arm, the muscles have con- 
tracted obediently to the mandate, the fire has done 
its part, the nerves of sensation have brought back 
their report, all in due order, but the result is a pain 
or loss of the injured member, as opposite to any thing 
mere nature would have wrought by her own combina- 
tions, as if it were the fruit of a miracle. So it is with 
all the crimes of violence, robbery, murder, assassina- 
tion. The knife in the assassin’s hand is a knife, doing 
what a knife should, by the laws which determine its 
properties. The heart of the victim is a heart, beating 
on, subject to its laws, and, when it is pierced, driving 
out the blood from his opened side, as certainly as it 
before drove the living flood through the circulations 
of the body. But the thrust of the knife, which is 
from the assassin’s will, makes a conjunction which 
nature, by her laws alone, would never make, and by 
force of this the victim dies. In like manner, a poison 
administered acts by its own laws in the body of the 
victim, which body also acts according to its laws, and 
the result ensuing is death; which death is attributable, 
not to the scheme of nature, but to a false conjunction 
of substances that was brought to pass wickedly, by a 
human will. In all these cases, the results of pain, 
disorder, and death are properly said to be unnatural; 
being, in a sense, violations of nature. The scheme 
of nature included no such results. They are disorders 
and dislocations made by the misconjunction or abuse 
of causes in the scheme of nature. And the same will 
be true of all the events that follow, in the vast com- 
plications and chains of causes, to the end of the world. 
Whatever mischief, or unnatural result is thus brought 
to pass by sin, will be the first link of an endless chain 


156 SIN THE ACTING OF A SUBSTANCE, MAN, 


of results not included in the scheme of nature, and so 
the beginning of an ever-widening circle of disturbance. 
And this is the true account of evil. 

But it will occur to some, that all human activities, 
the good as well as the bad, are producing new con- 
junctions of causes that otherwise would not exist. 
Mere nature will never set a wheel to the water-fall, 
or adjust the substances that compose a house or a 
steambcat. How then does it appear that the results 
of sin are called dislocations or disorders, or regarded 
as unnatural, with any greater propriety than the 
results of virtuous industry and all right action? Be- 
cause, we answer, the scheme of nature is adjusted for 
uses, not for abuses; for improvement, culture, comfort, 
and advancing productiveness; not for destruction or 
corruption. Therefore, it consists with the scheme of 
nature that water-wheels, houses, and steamboats should 
be built; for all the substances and powers of nature 
are given to be harnessed for service, and when they 
are, it is no dislocation, but only a fulfilling of the 
natural order. 

We come, also, to the same result by another and 
different process; viz., by considering what sin is in its 
relation to God and his works. In its moral concep- 
tion, it is an act against God, or the will and authority 
of God. And, since God is every where consistent 
with himself, setting all his creations in harmony with 
his principles, it is of course an act against the physical 
order, as truly as against the moral and spiritual. 
Taken as a dynamic, therefore, it wars with the scheme 
of nature, and fills it with the turmoil of its disorders 
and perversities. Or, if we take the concrete, speaking ~ 
of the sinner himself, he is a substance, in a world of 
substances, acting as he was not made to act. He was 


AS HE WAS NOT MADE TO ACT 157 


not made to sin, and the world was not made to help 
him sin. The mind of God being wholly against sin, 
the cast of every world and substance is repugnant to 
sin. The transgressor, therefore, is a free power acting 
against God morally, and physically against the cast 
of every world and substance of God — acting in, or 
among the worlds and substances, as he was not made 
to act. 

This, too, is the sentence of consciousness. The 
wrong-doer says within himself, —“I was not made 
to act thus, no laws of cause and effect, acting through 
me, did the deed. I did it myself, therefore am I 
guilty. Had I been made for the sin, it had been no 
sin, but only a fulfillment of the ends included in my 
substance.” And how terribly is this verdict certified 
by the discovery that the world refuses to bless him, 
and that all he does upon it is a work of deformity, 
shame, and disorder. The very substances of the world 
answer, as it were, in groans, to the violations of his 
guilty practice. 

Suppose, then, what all natural philosophers assume, 
that nature, considered as a realm of cause and effect, 
is a perfect system of order; what must take place in 
that system, when some one substance, no matter what, 
begins to act as it was not made to act? What can 
follow, but some general disturbance of the ideal 
harmony of the system itself? It will be as if some 
wheel or member in a watch had been touched by a 
magnet and began to have an action, thus, not intended 
by the maker; every other wheel and member will be 
affected by the vice of the one. Or it will be as if 
some planet, or star, taking its own way, were to set 
itself on acting as it was not made to act; instantly 
the shock of disorder is felt by every other member 


158 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


of the system. Or we may draw an illustration, ‘closer 
to probability, from the vital forms of physiology. A 
vital creature is a kind of unit, or little universe, 
fashioned by the life. Thus an egg is a complete vital 
system, having all its vessels, ducts, fluids, quantities, 
and qualities, arranged to meet the action of the 
embryonic germ. Suppose, now, in the process of 
incubation, that some small speck, or point of matter, 
under the shell, should begin, as the germ quickens, 
to act as it was not made to act, or against the internal 
harmony of the process going on, what must be the - 
result? Either a disease, manifestly, that stops the 
process, or else a deformity; a chick without a wing, 
or with one too many, or in some way imperfectly 
organized. What then must follow, when a whole 
order of substances called men, having an immense 
power over the lines of causes in the world, not only 
begin, but for thousands of years continue, and that 
on so large a scale that history itself is scarcely more 
than a record of the fact, to act as they were not made 
to act? We have only to raise this question, to see 
that the scheme of nature is marred, corrupted, dislo- 
cated by innumerable disturbances and disorders. Her 
laws all continue, but her conjunctions of causes are 
unnatural. Immense transformations are wrought, 
which represent, on a large scale, the repugnant, dis- 
orderly fact of sin. Indeed what we call nature must 
be rather a condition of unnature; apostolically repre- 
sented, a whole creation groaning and travailing in 
pain together with man, in the disorder consequent on 
his sin. 

The conclusion at which we thus arrive is one that 
will be practically verified by inspection. Let us under- 
take then a brief survey of the great departments of 


IN SOULS 159 


human existence and the world, -and discover, as far 
as we are able, the extent of the evil consequences 
wrought by sin. 

We begin with the soul or with souls. The soul, 
in its normal state, including the will or supernatural 
power, together with the involuntary powers subordi- 
nated to it by their laws, is an instrument tuned by 
the key-note of the conscience, viz., right, to sound 
harmoniously with it; or it is a fluid, we may say, 
whose form, or law of crystallization is the conscience. 
And then it follows that, if the will breaks into revolt, . 
the instrument is mistuned in every string, the fluid 
shaken becomes a shapeless, opaque mass, without unity 
or crystalline order. Or, if we resort to the analogies 
of vital phenomena, which are still closer, a revolted 
will is to the soul, or in it, what a foreign unreducible 
substance is in the vital and vascular system of the 
egg, or (to repeat an illustration) what a grain of 
sand is in the eye—the soul has become a weeping 
organ, not an organ simply of sight. Given the fact 
of sin, the fact of a fatal breach in the normal state, 
or constitutional order of the soul, follows of necessity. 
And exactly this we shall see, if we look in upon its 
secret chambers and watch the motions of sins in the 
confused ferment they raise—the perceptions dis- 
colored, the judgments unable to hold their scales 
steadily because of the fierce gusts of passion, the 
thoughts huddling by in crowds of wild suggestion, 
the imagination haunted by ugly and disgustful shapes, 
the appetites contesting with reason, the senses vic- 
torious over faith, anger blowing the overheated fires 
of malice, low jeaiousies sulking in dark angles of the 
soul, and envies baser still, hiding under the skim of 
its green-mantled pools—all the powers that should 


‘ 


= 


160 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


be strung in harmony, loosened from each other, and 
brewing in hopeless and helpless confusion; the con- 
science meantime thundering wrathfully above and 
shooting down hot bolts of judgment, and the pallid 
fears hurrying wildly about with their brimstone 
torches — these are the motions of sins, the Tartarean 
landscape of the soul and its disorders, when self-govern- 
ment is gone and the constituent integrity is dissolved. 
We can not call it the natural state of man, nature 
disowns it. No one that looks in upon the ferment 
of its morbid, contesting, rasping, restive, uncontrol- 
lable action can imagine, for a moment, that he looks 
upon the sweet, primal order of life and nature. No 
name sufficiently describes it, unless we coin a name 
and call it a condition of unnature. 

Not that any law of the soul’s nature is discontinued, 
or that any capacity which makes one a proper man is 
taken away by the bad inheritance, as appears to be 
the view of some theologians; every function of 
thought and feeling remains, every mental law contin- 
ues to run; the disorder is that of functions abused 
and laws of operation provoked to a penal and retribu- 
tive action, by the misdoings of an evil will. Though 
it is become, in this manner, a weeping organ, as we 
just now intimated, still it is an organ of sight; only 
it sees through tears. And the profound reality of the 
disorder appears in the fact that the will by which it 
was wrought can not, unassisted, repair it. To do this, 
in fact, is much the same kind of impossibility — the 
phrenologists will say precisely the same—as for a 
man who has disorganized his brain by over-exertion, 
or by steeping it in opium, or drenching it in alcohol, 
to take hold, by his will, of the millions of ducts and 
fibers woven together in the mysterious net-work of 


IN THE BODY 161 


its substance, and bring them all back into the spontane- 
ous order of health and spiritual integrity. 

No! it is one thing to break or shatter an organiza- 
tion and a very different to restore it. Almost any 
one can break an egg, but not all the chemists in the 
world ca make one whole, or restore even so much as 
the slightest fracture of the shell. As little can a man 
will back, into order and tune, this fearfully vast and 
delicate complication of faculties; which indeed he 
can not even conceive, except in the crudest manner, by 
the study of a life. 


It is important also, considering the moral reactions 
of the body, and especially the great fact of a propaga- 
tion of the species, to notice the disorganizing effect of 
sin, in the body. Body and soul, as long as they sub- 
sist in their organized state, are a strict unity. The 
abuses of one are abuses also of the other, the disturb- 
ances and diseases of one disturb and disease the other. 
The fortunes of the body must, in this way, follow the 
fortunes of the soul, whose organ it is. Sin has all its 
working too in the working of the brain. To think an 
evil thought, indulge a wicked purpose or passion, will, in 
this view, be much as if the sin had brought in a grain of 
sand and lodged it in the tissues of the brain. What 
then must be the effect, when every path in its curious 
net-work of intelligence is traveled, year by year, by 
‘the insulting myriads of sinning thought, hardened 
by the tramp of their feet, and dusted by their smoky 
trail ? 

But we are speaking theoretically. If we turn to 
practical evidences, or matters of fact, we shall see 
plainly enough that what should follow, in the effects 
of sin upon the body, actually does follow. How the 


162 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


vices of the appetites and passions terminate in diseases 
and a final disorganization of the body, is well under- 
stood. The false conjunction made by intemperate 
drink, deluging the tissues of the body with its liquid 
poisons, and reducing the body to a loathsome wreck, 
is not peculiar to that vice. The condition of sin is a 
condition of general intemperance. It takes away the 
power of self-government, loosens the passions, and 
makes even the natural appetite for food an instigator 
of excess. Indeed, how many of the sufferings and 
infirmities even of persons called virtuous, are known 
by all intelligent physicians to be only the groaning of 
the body under loads habitually imposed, by the un- 
tempered and really diseased voracity of their appetites. 
And if we could trace all the secret actions of causes, 
how faithfully would the fevers, the rheumatisms, the 
neuralgic and hypochondriacal torments, all the grim 
looking woes of dyspepsia, be seen to follow the unreg- 
ulated license of this kind of sin. Nor is any thing 
better understood than that whatever vice of the mind 
— wounded pride, unregulated ambition, hatred, covet- 
ousness, fear, inordinate care — throws the mind out 
of rest, throws the body out of rest also. Thus it is 
that sin, in all its forms, becomes a power of bodily 
disturbance, shattering the nerves, inflaming the tis- 
sues, distempering the secretions, and brewing a gen- 
eral ferment of disease. In one view, the body is 
’ a kind of perpetual crystallization, and the erystal of 
true health can not form itself under sin, because the 
body has, within, a perpetual agitating cause, which 
forbids the process. If then, looking round upon the 
great field of humanity, and noting the almost univer- 
sal working of disease, in so many forms and varieties 
‘that they can not be named or counted, we sometimes 


IN THE BODY 163 


exclaim with a sigh, what a hospital the world is! we 
must be dull spectators, if we stop at this, and do not 
also connect the remembrance that sin is in the world ; 
a gangrene of the mind, poisoning all the roots of 
health and making visible its woes, by so many woes 
of bodily disease and death. 

The particular question, whether bodily mortality 
had entered the world by sin, we will not discuss. 
That is principally a scripture question, and the word 
of scripture is not to be assumed in my argument. 
There obviously might have been a mode of translation 
to the second life, that should have none of the painful 
and revolting incidents which constitute the essential 
reality of death. We do moreover know that a very 
considerable share of the diseases and deaths of our 
race are the natural effects of sin or wrong-doing. 
There is great reason also to suspect, so devastating 
is the power of moral evil, that the infections and 
deadly plagues of the world are somehow generated by 
this cause. They seem to have their spring in some 
new virus of death, and this new virus must have been 
somewhere and somehow distilled, or generated. We 
can not refer them to mineral causes, or vegetable, or 
animal, which are nearly invariable, and they seem, as 
they begin their spread at some given locality, to have 
a humanly personal origin. That the virus of a pois- 
onous and deadly contagion has been generated by 
human vices, we know, as a familiar fact of history ; 
which makes it the more probable that other pestilential 
contagions have been generated in the deteriorated 
populations and sweltering vices of the East, whence 
our plagues are mostly derived. On this point we 
assert nothing as a truth positively discovered; we 
only design, by these references, to suggest the possible 


164 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


(and, to us, probable) extent and power of that fer- 
ment, brewed by the instigations of sin, in the diseased 
populations of the world. What we suggest respect- 
ing the virus of the world’s plagues may be true, or it 
may not; this at least is shown beyond all question, 
that sin is a wide-spreading, dreadful power of bodily 


~ distemper and disorganization, which is the point of 


principal consequence to our argument. 


Passing now to society and the disorganizing effects 
of sin there to appear, we see, at a glance, that if the 
soul and body are both distempered and reduced to a 
state of unnature, the great interest of society must 
suffer in a correspondent manner and degree. Consid- 
ered as a growth or propagation, humanity is, in some 
very important sense, an organic whole. If the races 
_are not all descended of a single pair, but of several or 
even many pairs, as is now strenuously asserted by 
some, both on grounds of science and of scripture in- 
terpretation, still it makes no difference as regards the 
matter of their practical and properly religious unity. 
The genus humanity is still a single genus comprehend- 
ing the races, and we know from geology that they had 
a begun existence. That they also sinned, at the be- 
ginning, is as clear, from the considerations already ad- 
vanced, as if they had been one. Whence it follows 
that descendants of the sinning pair, or pairs, born of 
natures thrown out of harmony and corrupted by sin, 
could not, on principles of physiology, apart from scrip- 
ture teachings, be unaffected by the distempers of their 
parentage. They must be constituently injured, or dep- 
ravated. It is not even supposable that organic na- 
tures, injured and disordered, as we have seen that 
human bodies are by sin, should propagate their life in 


IN SOCIETY 165 


a progeny unmarred and perfect. If we speak of sin 
as action, their children may be innocent, and so far 
may reveal the loveliness of innocence ;—still the erys- 
talline order is broken ; the passions, tempers, appetites, 
are not in the proportions of harmony and reason; the 
balance of original health is gone by anticipation, and 
a distempered action is begun, whose affinities sort with 
evil rather than with good. |¢ is as if, by their own 
sin, they had just so far distempered their organization. 
Thus far the fruit of sin is in them. And this the 
scriptures, in a certain popular, comprehensive way, 
sometimes call “ sin” ; because it is a condition of dep- 
ravation that may well enough be taken as the root of © 
a guilty, sinning life. They do not undertake to 
settle metaphysically the point where personal guilt 
commences, but only suit their convenience in a com- 
prehensive term that designates the race as sinners; 
passing by those speculative questions that only divert 
attention from the salvation provided for a world of 
sinners. The doctrine of physiology therefore is the 
doctrine of original sin, and we are held to inevitable 
orthodoxy by it, even if the scriptures are cast away. 
But if the laws of propagation contain the fact, in 
this manner, of an organic depravation of humanity or 
human society, under sin once broken loose, many will 
apprehend in such a fact, some ground of impeachment 
against God; as if he had set us on our trial, under 
terms of the sorest disadvantage. If we start, they 
ask, under conditions of hereditary damage, with na- 
tures depravated and affinities already distempered by 
the sin of progenitors, as truly as if we had commenced 
the bad life ourselves, what is our bad life when we 
begin it, but the natural issue of our hopeless misbe- 
gotten constitution? It is no suffcient answer to say 


166 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


that no blame attaches to the mere depravation sup- 
posed, whether it be called sin or by any other name ; 
it shocks them to hear it even suggested, that a good 
being like God can have set us forth in our trial, under 
such immense disadvantages. Probably enough they 
assail the doctrine of inherited depravity, in terms of 
fiery denunciation, whether taken as a dogma set up by 
theologians, or as being affirmed by Christian revelation 
itself ; not observing that it is the inevitable fact also 
of human history; and, admitting the fact of sin, a 
necessary deduction even of physiological science. 

Now so far from admitting the supposed disadvan- — 
tage incurred by this organic depravation of the race, 
or the mode of existence to which it pertains as a natu- 
ral incident, we are led to an opinion exactly opposite. 
Indeed there appears to be no other way possible, in 
which the race could have been set forth on their trial, 
with as good chances of a successful and happy issue. 

Thus, taking it for granted, that God is to create a 
moral population, or a population of free intelligences, 
that, having a begun existence, are to be educated into, 
and finally established in, good, there were obviously 
two methods possible. They might always be created 
outright in full volume, like so many Adams, only to 
exist independently and apart from all reproductive 
arrangements, or they might be introduced, as we are, 
in the frail and barely initiated existence of the infantile 
state, each generation born of the preceding, and alto- 
gether composing a rigidly constituent organic unity 
of races. 

In the former case they would have the advantage of 
a perfectly uncorrupted nature, and, if that be any ad- 
vantage, of a full maturity in what may be called the 
raw staple of their functions. But such advantages 


IN SOCIETY 167 


amount to scarcely more than the opportunity of a 
greater and more tremendous peril; for, being all, by 
supposition, under the same conditions privative with 
the first man of scripture,! they would as certainly do 
the same things, descending to the same bad experiment, 
to be involved in the same consequent fall and disorder. 
They would only be more strictly original in their dep- 
ravation, having it as the fruit of their own guilty 
choices. 

And then, as regards all mitigating and restoring 
influences, the comparative disadvantage would be im- 
mense. Self-centered now, every man in his sin, and 
having no ligatures of race and family and family affec- 
tion to bind them together, the selfishness of their fall 
would be unqualified, softened by no mitigations. Spir- 
itual love they can not understand, because they never 
have felt the natural love of sex, family, and kindred, 
by which, under conditions of propagation, a kind of 
inevitable, first-stage virtue is instituted ; such as mit- 
igates the severities of sin, softens the sentiments to a 
social, tender play, and offers to the mind a type, every 
where present, of the beauty and true joy of a disinter- 
ested, spiritual benevolence. ‘They compose, instead, 
a burly prison-gang of probationers, linked together by 
no ties of consanguinity, reflecting no traces of family 
likeness, bent to each other’s and God’s love by no dear 
memories. Society there is none. Law is impossible. 
Society and law suppose conditions of organic unity al- | 
ready prepared. Every man for himself, is the grand ~ 
maxim of life ; for all are atoms together, in the med- 
ley of the common selfishness ; only the old atoms have 
an immense advantage over the young ones fresh ar- 
rived; for these new comers of probation, come of 


1 Chapter IV., p. 99. 


168 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


course to the prey, having no guardians or protectors, 
and no tender sentiments of care and kindred prepared 
to shelter them, and smooth their way. Besides, the 
world into which they come must have been already 
fouled and disordered by the sin of the prior popula- 
tions, and must therefore be a frame of being, wholly 
inappropriate to their new-created innocence; or else, 
if not thus disordered, must have been a casement of 
iron, too rigid and impassive to receive any injury from 
sin, and therefore incapable of any retributive discipline 
teturned upon it. There is, in short, no condition of 
trial which, after all, is seen to be so utterly forbidding 
and hopeless as just this state of Adamic innocence, 
independence, and maturity of faculty, which many are 
so ready to require of God, as the only method of prom- 
ise and fair advantage, in the beginning of a respon- 
sible life. 

How different the condition realized where men are 
propagated as a race or races. Then are they linked 
together by a necessary, constituent, anticipative love. 
Moved by this love, the progenitors are immediately set 
to a work of care and benefaction, beautifully opposite 
to the proper selfishness of their sin. The delicate and 
tender being received to their embrace, circulates their 
blood, will bear their name, and is looked upon, even by 
their selfishness, as a multiplied and dearer self. They 
are even made to feel, in a lower and more rudimental 
way, what joy there is in a disinterested love; and 
they pour out their fondness, in ways that even try 
their invention, instigated by the compulsory bliss of 
sacrifice. They want the best things too for their 
child, even his virtue ; and probably enough his religious 
virtue ; for they dread the bitter woes of wrong-doing. 
This is true, at least, of all but such as have fallen 


IN SOCIETY 168 


below nature in their vices, and ceased to hear her 
voice. ‘They even undertake to be a providence, and 
do for their child all which the love of God, even till 
now rejected, has been seeking to do for themselves ; 
commanding him away from wrong, and warning him 
faithfully of its dangers. Besides it is a great point, 
in the scheme of propagated life, that the child learns 
how to be grown, so to speak, into, and exist in, another 
will; which is an immense advantage to the religious 
nurture, even where the parental character is not good. 
He is not like a population of untutored, unregulated 
Adams, who have just come to the finding of a man’s 
will in them, and do not know how to use it, least of 
all how to sink it obediently in the sovereign will and 
authority of God. The child’s will grew in authority, and 
he comes out gently, in the reverence of a subordinated 
habit, to choose the way of obedience, having his reli- 
gious conscience configured and trained, by a kind of 
family conscience, previously developed. There is 
almost no family therefore—none except the very 
worst and most depraved —in which the rule of the | 
house is not a great spiritual benefit, and a means even 
of religious virtue. How much more, where the odor 
of a heavenly piety fills the house and sanctifies the 
atmosphere of life itself! Instead of being set forth as 
an overgrown man, issued from the Creator’s hand to 
make the tremendous choice, undirected by experience, 
he is gently inducted, as it were, by choices of parents 
before his own, into the habit and accepted practice of 
all holy obedience ; growing up in the nurture of their 
grace, as truly as of their natural affection. Further- 
more, as corruption or depravation is propagated, under 
well-known laws of physiology, what are we to think 
but that a regenerate life may be also propagated ; and 


170 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


that so the scripture truth of a sanctification from the 
womb may sometime cease to be a thing remarkable 
and become a commonly expected fact? And then, if 
a point should finally be reached, under the sublime 
palingenesia of redemption, when Christian faith, to- 
gether with its fruits of nurture and sanctified propaga- 
tion, should be nearly or quite universal, and the 
world, which is now in its infancy, should roll on, mil- 
lions of ages after, training its immense populations for 
the skies, how magnificently preponderant the advan- 
tages of the plan of propagation, which at first we 
thought could be only a plan to set us out in the 
wrong, and sacrifice our virtue by anticipation. 

This comparison, which might otherwise seem to 
be a digression, will effectually remove those false 
impressions so generally prevalent concerning God’s 
equity in the fact of natural corruption ; and if this be 
done, a chief impediment to all right conceptions of 
the human state, as affected by sin, will be removed. 
In this manner, wholly apart from the scriptures, in- 
structed only by the laws of physiology, we discover 
the certain truth of an organic fall or social lapse in the 
race; we find humanity broken, disordered, plunged 
into unnature by sin; but dark and fearful as the state 
may be, there is nothing in it unhopeful, nothing to 
. accuse. We are only where we should be, each by his 
-own act, if we were created independently ; with im- 
mense advantages added to mitigate the hopelessness 
of our disorder. 

It is very true that, under these physiological terms 
of propagation, society falls or goes down as a unit, and 
evil becomes, in a sense, organic in the earth. The bad 
inheritance passes, and fears, frauds, crimes against prop- 
erty, character and life, abuses of power, oppressions 


IN SOCIETY 171 


of the weak, persecutions of the good, piracies, wars of 
revolt, and wars of conquest, are the staple of the 
world’s bitter history. All that Mr. Fourier has said 
of society, in its practical operation, is true ; it is a pit- 
iless and dreadful power, as fallen society should be. 
And yet it is a condition of existence far less dreadful 
than it would be, if the organic force of natural affini- 
ties and affections were not operative still, in the 
desolations of evil, to»produce institutions, construct 
nations,! and establish a condition of qualified unity 
and protection. Otherwise, or existing only as sepa- 
rate units, in no terms of consanguinity, we should, 
probably, fall into a state of utter non-organization, or, 
what is the same, of universal prey. The grand woe 
of society, therefore, is not, as this new prophet of sci- 
ence teaches, the bad organization of society ; but that 
good organization, originally beautiful and beneficent, 
can only mitigate, but can not shut away, the evils by 
which it is infested. The line of propagation is, in one 
view, the line of transmission by which evil passes ; 
but it is, at the same time, a sure spring of solidarity 
and organific power, by which all the principal checks 
and mitigations of evil, save those which are brought 
in with the grace of supernatural redemption, are sup- 
plied. Otherwise the state of evil, untransmitted and 
purely original in all, would make a hell of anarchy, 
unendurable and final. 

Nothing, in this view, could be more superficial than 
Mr. Fourier’s conception of the woes of society. Ig- 
noring, at the outset, the existence of sin, and assuming 
that every man comes from the hand of his Maker in 
a state that represents the Maker’s integrity, even as 


1 The word itself represents upon its face the common life of a com- 
mon root or parentage. 
f 


172 _ CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


the stars do, he lays it down as a fundamental maxim 
of science, that all the passions and appetites of the 
race are like gravity itself, instincts that reach after 
order —in his own rather pretentious and extra scien- 
tific language, that “ attractions are proportioned to des- 
tinies.” The attractions of the worlds of matter adjust 
their positions; so the perfect order of the heavens. 
So the attractions of men, to wit, their lusts, appetites, 
passions, will adjust the pe ect order of society. 
Why, then, do they not?» “pie tu social mal-organ- 
ization. And, with so many impulses or passions 
gravitating all toward order, whence came the mal- 
organization ?—why are not the heavens, too, mal- 
organized, and with'as good right? But I refer to these 
insane theories of social science, not for any purpose of 
argument against them}but simply to get light and 
shade for my subject. The woe of society is deeper 
and more difficult ; mot to be mended by artificial recon- 
_ structions apart from all ties of consanguinity, not by 
contracts of good will and mutual service, not by bonds 
of interest and licenses of passion. It lies, first_of all, 
in the fall of man himself, which includes the fall of 
passion; a fall which is mitigated even compulsorily 
by the organific power of consanguinity, but can, by no 
human wisdom, or skill, or combination, be restored. 
Organization will do what it can, it will be more or less 
bad as it is more or less perverted by injustice, or mis- 
directed and baffled by the instigations of selfishness 
and the bad affinities and demonized passions of sin. 






It now remains to carry our inquest one step farther. 
If sin has power, taken as a dynamic, to affect the soul, 
the body, and society, in the manner already indicated, 
reducing all these departments of nature to a state 


E NATURAL WORLD 173 







































not be incredible that it may also 
e a like disorder in the material 
e immense power of the human 
bstances of the world and the 
s, is seldom adequately con- 
, up to the moon, is capable 
affected by it. Being a 
inually playing itself into 
ombinations of matter, 
increasing quantities, 
‘and dismembering con- 
gedicines, and reducing 
any. thing is left 
‘these changes, 
Pace, are benefi- 


conjunctions 
ceived. Almo 
of being somehe 
force supernatura 
the chemistries a 
converting shapes, 
transferring positio 
junctions, turning pe 
fruits to poisons, till at 
in its properly natural s 
which it is the toil of human 
cent; and a multitude of oa . 
faithfully, the prime distinctie h ting of 
a power against God, or as it Vv t A 
Could we only bring together into a ¢e@ 
all the new structures, compositions, invé 
qualities, already produced by man, which areya 
the furniture only of his sin — means of self-indw 
instruments of violence, shows of pride, instigation 
appetite, incitements and institutes of corrupt pleasure 
—all the leprosies and leper-houses of vice, the prisons 
of oppression, the hospitals and battle-fields of war, we 
should see a face put on the world which God never 
gave it, and which only represents the bad conversion 
it has suffered, under the immense and ever-industrious 
perversities of sin. 

But we must carry our search to a point that is 
deeper and more significant. In what is called nature, 
we find a large admixture of signs or objects, which 
certainly do not belong to an ideal state of beauty, and 


174 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


do not, therefore, represent the god, whence 
they are supposed to come. The 
where, and yet the superficial multitudes 
appear to take it for granted that ¢ reations of 
God are beautiful of course. “Dl assume it as 
a necessary point of reverenge, or ¢ e it as a point 
od represents 
ng cast in the mold of his 
thought, which is divine beauty itself. Not only do 
ers in prose go the round of 
»dews and flowers, 
hrine, as if the world 
“but our philosophers 
iple, and our natural. 
in their arguments, that the 
represent the perfect forms of 
ght, by which they were fashioned. 
b such a conceit might be dissipated 
ace of revision; for God is the infinite 
Wy é vho can imagine, looking on this or that 
dry and prosy scene of nature, that it represents 
nfinite beauty? The fact of creation argues no 
uch thing. For what if it should happen to have 
been a part of God’s design in the work to represent, 
not himself only as the pure and Perfect One, the 
immutable throne of law and universal order, but quite 
as truly, and in immediate proximity, to represent man 
to himself ; that he may see both what he is for, and 
what he is, and struggle up out of one into the other. 
Then, or in that view, it would be the perfection of 
the world, taken in its moral adaptations, that it is not 
perfect, and does not answer to the beauty of the crea- 
tive mind, save under the large qualification specified. 
And exactly this appears to be the true conception 









































nature, sentimentalizi 
and paying their wor 


often teach it as 
theologians asst 
forms of +t 


IN THE NATURAL WORLD 175 


of the physical world. What does it mean, for example, 
that the vital organizations are continually seen to be 
attempting products which they can not finish? Thus 
a fruit tree covers itself with an immense profusion of 
blossoms, that drop, and do not set in fruit. And then, 
of those fruits which are set, an immense number fall, 
strewing the ground with deaths—tokens all of an 
abortive attempt in nature, if we call it nature, to 
execute more than she can finish. And this we see in 
all the growths of the world —they lay out more than 
they can perform. Is this the ideal perfection of 
nature, or is there some touch of unnature and dis- 
order init? Is God, the Creator, represented in this? 
Does he put himself before us in this manner, as a 
being who attempts more fruits than he can produce? 
or is there a hint in it, for man, of what may come to 
pass in himself? an image under which he may con- 
ceive himself and fitly represent himself in language ? 
a token, also, and proof of that most real abortion, to 
which he may bring even his immortal nature, despite 
of all the saving mercies of God ? 

Swedenborg and his followers have a way of repre- 
senting, I believe, that God creates the world through 
man, by which they understand that what we call the 
creation, is a purely gerundive matter — God’s perpetual 
act—and that he holds the work to man, at every 
stage, so as to represent him always at his present 
point, and act upon him fitly to his present taste. Not 
far off is Jonathan Edwards’s conception of God’s up- 
holding of the universe—it is in fact a perpetual 
reproduction ; the creation, so called, being to his 
person, what the image in a mirror is to the person 
before it, from whom it proceeds and by whom it is 
sustained. Indeed this latter conception runs into the 


~~ 


176 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


other, and becomes identical with it, as soon as we take 
in the fact that God is always being and becoming to 
man, both in counsel and feeling, what is most exactly 
fit to man’s character and want; for, in that view, 
God’s image, otherwise called his creation, will be all 
the while receiving a color from man, and will so far 
be configured to him. Accordingly, we look, in either 
view, to see the Kosmos or outward frame of things 
held to man, linked to his fortunes to rise and fall 
with him, and so, under certain limitations, to give him 
back his doings and represent him to himself —repre- 
senting God, in fact, the more adequately that it does. 

The doctrine of types in the physical world, to repre- 
sent conditions of character and changes of fortune in 
the spiritual, is only another conception of the same gen- 
eral truth. And this doctrine of types we know to be 
true in part ; for language itself is possible only in virtue 
of the fact that physical types are provided, as bases of 
words, having each a natural fitness to represent some 
spiritual truth of human life ; which is in fact the prix 
cipal use and significance of language. Whence also it 
follows that if human life is disordered, perverted, re- 
duced to a condition of unnature by sin, there must also 
be provided, as the necessary condition of language, types 
that represent so great a change; which is equivalent to 
saying that the fortunes of the outer world must, to some 
very great extent, follow the fortunes of the occupant and 
groan with him in his disorders. 

Or we are brought to a conclusion essentially the same, 
by considering the complete and perfect unity of natural 
causes ; how they form a dynamic whole, resting in an 
exact balance of mutual relationship, so that if any world, 
or particle, starts from its orbit, or position, every other 
world and particle feels the change. What then must 


IN THE NATURAL WORLD 177 


follow when the given force or substance, man, begins 
and for long ages continues to act as he was not made to 
act; out of character, against God, refusing place, and 
breaking out on every side from the general scheme of 
unity and harmony, in which the creation was to be 
comprehended ? What can his human disorder be, but 
a propagating cause of disorder? what his deformity 
within, but a soul of deformity without, in the surround. 
ings of the field he occupies ? 

And this again is but another version of the fact that 
the final causes of things are moral ; the arrangement 
being that natural causes shall react upon all wrong- 
doing, in retributive diseases, discords, and pains, to 
correct and chasten the wrong; which, indeed, is the 
same thing as to say that the world was made to share 
the fortunes of man, and fall with him in his fall. 

Whichever of these views we take, for at bottom they 
all coalesce in the same conclusion, we see, at a glance, 
that, given the fact of sin, what we call nature can be 
no mere embodiment of God’s beauty and the eternal 
order of his mind, but must be, to some wide extent, a 
realm of deformity and abortion; groaning with the 
discords of sin and keeping company with it in the 
guilty pains of its apostasy. Even as the apostle says, 
meaning doubtless all which his words most natur- 
ally signify —‘“‘ For the whole creation groaneth and 
travaileth in pain together.” 

We need not therefore scruple to allow and also to 
maintain the judgment, that many things we meet are 
not beautiful ; we should rather look for many that are 
not. Thus we have growths in the briars and thorns 
that do not represent the beauty and benignity of God ; 
but under his appointment take on their spiny ferocity 
from man, whose surroundings they are, and in whose 


178 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN, 


fortunes they are made to participate. The same may 
be said of loathsome and disgusting animals. Or we 
may take the pismire race for an example—a race 
of military vermin, who fight pitched battles and some- 
times make slaves of their captives; representing noth- 
ing surely in God, save his purpose to reflect, in keenest 
mockery, the warlike chivalry and glory of man. It 
was our fortune once to see a battle of these insect heroes. 
On a square rod of ground it raged for two whole days, 
a braver field than Marathon, or Waterloo, covered with 
the dead and dying, and with fierce enemies rolled in the 
dust, still fighting on in a deadly grapple of halves, 
after the slender connection of their middle part had 
been completely severed in the encounter. That these 
creatures image God in their fight, can not be supposed, 
save as God may reveal, by a figure so powerful, the 
sense he has of what we call our glory, the bloody glory 
of our sin. 

Under the same principle that the world is linked to 
man and required to represent him to himself, we are 
probably to account for the many and wide-spread 
tokens of deformity round us in the visible objects of 
nature. Whoever may once set his thought to this 
kind of inquiry, will be amazed by the constant recur- 
rence of deformities, or things which lack the beauties 
of form. After all the fine sentimentalities, lavished by 
rote and without discriminating thought on the works 
and processes of nature, he will be surprised to find 
that the world is not as truly a realm of beauty, as of 
beauty flecked by injury. The growths are carbuncled 
and diseased, and the children have it for a play to 
fetch a perfect leaf. Fogs and storms blur the glory of 
the sky, and foul days, rightly so called, interspace the 
bright and fair. The earth itself displays vast deserts 


IN THE NATURAL WORLD 179 


swept by the horrid simoom ; muddy rivers, with their 
fenny shores, tenanted by hideous alligators; swamps 
and morasses, spreading out in provinces of quagmire, 
and reeking in the steam of death. In the kingdom of 
life, disgusting and loathsome objects appear, too numer- 
ous to be recounted; such as worms and the myriads 
of base vermin, deformed animals, dwarfs, idiots, lepro- 
sies, and the rot of cities swept by the plague; history 
itself depicting the mushrooms sprouting in the bodies 
of the unburied dead, and the jackals howling in the 
chambers, at their dreadful repast. Even more signifi- 
cant still is the fact, because it is a fact that concerns 
the honor even of our personal organism, that no living 
man or woman is ever found to be a faultless model of 
beauty and proportion. When the sculptor will fashion 
a perfect form, he is obliged to glean for it, picking out 
the several parts of beauty from a hundred mal-propor- 
tioned, blemished bodies in actual life. And what is yet 
more striking, full three-fourths of the living races of 
men are so ugly, or so far divested of beauty in their 
mold, that no sculptor would ever think of drawing on 
them for a single feature ! 

This word deformity, which is properly a word of 
sight, may be used too in its largest and most inclusive 
import to cover all the ground of the senses, together 
with a whole family of words in de or dis, that indicate 
a relation of disjunction — the dis-gusts of the taste and 
the smell; the dis-easement, or pain of the sensibility ; 
the dis-cords and the unmelodious notes that storm the 
offended ear of music —the manifold braying, cawing, 
screeching, yelling sounds, such as would be low in a 
farce, but are issued still from as many badly-voiced 
pipes in the great organ of nature. And then besides 
we have dis-tempers, dis-proportions, dis-tortions, dis- 


- 


6 


180 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN 


orders, de-rangements, answering all, shall we say, to 
the dis-location of our inward harmony, and revealing 
in that manner the desolating effects of our sin. 

If it should be urged that all these deformities and dis- 
cords are necessary contrasts, to enliven the beauty and 
heighten the music of nature, it is enough to answer 
that pain is as necessary to joy, eternal pain to eternal 
joy ; or better still, because the analogy is closer and 
more exact, that moral deformity is just as necessary in 
God to the sufficient impression of his moral beauty. 
Though, if we take them all together in their moral 
import and uses — the abortions, the deformed growths 
and landscapes, and the strange jargon of sounds — re- 
garding them as prepared by the Almighty Father, fitly 
to insphere a creature supernatural whom he is correct- 
ing in his sins and training unto himself, then do they 
rise into real dignity and reveal a truly divine magnifi- 
cence. This, we say, is indeed the tremendous beauty 
of God; and the strange, wild jargon of the world, 
shattered thus by sin, becomes to us a mysterious, tran- 
scendent hymn. Still it is deformity, jargon, death, 
and the only winning side of it is, that it answers to the 
woe, and meets the want of our sin. 


CHAPTER VII 
ANTICIPATIVE CONSEQUENCES 


In the account offered of the consequences of sin, we 
have spoken of these consequences as effects transpiring 
under laws, and so as matters post in respect to the fact 
of sin. The result stated coincides, in all but the posi- 
tive or inflictive form, with the original curse denounced 
on man’s apostasy, as represented in the Adamic history 
or sin-myth, as some would call it, of the ancient scrip- 
tures. That primal curse, it is conceived, penetrates 
the very ground as a doom of sterility, covers it with 
thorns and thistles and all manner of weeds to be sub- 
dued by labor, makes it weariness to live, brings in 
death with its armies of pains and terrors to hunt us out 
of life, and so unparadises the world. Call it then a 
myth, disallow the notion of a positive infliction as 
being unphilosophical; still the matter of the change, 
or general world-lapse asserted in it, is one of the grand- 
est, most massive, best-attested truths included in human 
knowledge. It is just that which ought to be true, 
under the conditions, and which we have found, by in- 
spection also, to be true as a matter of fact. 

Still there is a difficulty, or a great and hitherto 
insufficiently explored question, that remains. It is the 
question of date or time; for when we speak, as in the 
previous chapter, of the consequences of sin, we seem 

181 


182 TWO KINDS OF CONSEQUENCES 


to imply that upon, or after the fact of sin, the physical 
order of the world, affected by the shock, underwent a 
great change that amounted to a fall; becoming, from 
that point onward, a realm of deformity and discord, 
as before it was not, and displaying, in all its sceneries 
and combinations, the tokens of a broken constitution. 
All which, it will readily occur to any one, can not, in 
that form, be true. For the sturdy facts of science rise 
up to confront us in such representations, testifying that 
death, and prey, and deformed objects, and hideous 
monsters, were in the world long before the arrival of 
man. Nay, the rocks open their tombs and show us 
that older curses than the curse, older consequences 
antedating sin, had already set their marks on the 
world and had even made it, more than once, an 
Aceldama of the living races. 

**T need scarce say,” remarks Hugh Miller, “that the 
paleontologist finds no trace in nature of that golden 
age of the world, of which the poets delighted to sing, 
when all creatures lived together in unbroken peace, 
and war and bloodshed were unknown. Ever since 
animal life began upon our planet, there have existed, 
in all the departments of being, carnivorous classes, 
~ who could not live but by the death of their neighbors ; 
and who were armed, in consequence, for their destruc- 
tion, like the butcher with his knife and the angler with 
his hook and spear.”! This being true, the paradisaic 
history, as commonly understood, is still farther off 
from a possible verification, unless we suppose the curse 
to be there reported as a fact subsequent, though latently 
incorporate before, because it is there discovered, and 
plainly could not be conceived, at that time, as the facts 
of future science may require. 


1 Testimony of the Rocks, p. 99. 


CONSEQUENCES SUBSEQUENT IN TIME 183 


For the true solution of this apparent collision 
between geologic revelations and the paradisaic history, 
lies in the fact which many have not considered, that 
there are two modes of consequence, or two kinds of | 
consequences; those which come as effects under physi- 
cal causes, and have their time as events subsequent; 
and those which come anticipatively, or before the facts 
whose consequences they are, because of intellectual 
conditions, or because intelligence, affected by such 
facts, apprehended before the time, could not act as 
being ignorant of them. These two modes of con- 
sequence, and particularly the latter, now demand our 
attention. 


As regards the former — the consequences of suffer- 
ing and dislocation that follow sin, as effects in time 
subsequent — there is happily not much requiring to be 
said; for the truth on that subject is familiar, and is in 
fact overmuch insisted on by the modern teachers. 
Only it happens that, while they so frequently make a 
gospel of the mere retributive principle thus arrayed 
against evil, they do also contrive to narrow the bad 
consequences of sin to a range so restricted, and to 
results of mischief so nearly trivial, that really nothing 
is involved in disobedience, except ‘in cases of extreme 
viciousness and moral abandonment. They do notcon- 
ceive such a thing as the real dissolution of the primal 
order and harmony even of the soul, and the ceasing to 
be any longer a complete integer, when it drops its 
moral integrity. What I have so abundantly shown in 
the previous chapter, they do not allow themselves 
to see — that any beginning, or outbreak, of sin carries 
with it the inevitable fact of a shock to the general state 
of order; starting trains of penal and retributive con- 


184 PRE-EXISTING EVILS, HOW FAR 


sequences, which have no assignable limit, and which 
none but a supernatural and divine agency can reverse. 
Any thing entering into God’s world, or falling out 
in it, that is against his will, breaks of course the 
crystalline order, and how far the fracture will go no 
one can tell. 

When, therefore, we meet any given token of lapse, 
or disorder, it may not be clear to us, on mere inspec- 
tion, how it came in, whether among the subsequent 
or the anticipative consequences of sin. Thorns and 
thistles— did they take on their spiny and savage 
armor before the sin of man, or after? Possibly after. 
No man can tell beforehand how far such a beginning 
of disobedience and apostasy from God might penetrate 
the fabric, and poison the substance, and so determine 
the form of growths in the world; for, in a scheme of 
perfect reason, any violation of wrong travels fast and 
far, and no one can guess how far. But if the geologist, 
opening the hidden registers of the world, finds the 
portrait, or even the indisputable analogon of a thistle 
in the stone, that is the end of the inquiry. 

The substance then of what I would desire to say on 
this particular point is that, without some conviction of 
evil and pain following after sin as its necessary effect, 
there could be no such thing as a practically real moral 
government in the world. That such evil and pain do 
follow, with inevitable certainty, even as all effects fol- 
low after their causes, we perceive and almost uni- 
versally admit; for they are distinguishable in all the 
four great departments of being —the body, the soul, 
society, and the world. And since it is theoretically 
true that, in any perfect system of being, the disturb- 
ance of a particle disturbs the whole, we are to admit, 
without difficulty, and as it were by intellectual require- 


REFERRIBLE TO OLDER POPULATIONS 185 


ment, that evils most remote, deepest, widest, and most 
comprehensive, may be effects, or inevitable sequents 
of human transgression. On this point our faith should 
properly be shocked by nothing; for it is a fact visible 
beforehand, all time apart, that sin must be a grand, all- 
penetrating sacrament of woe to the world that contains 
it. And we shall most naturally take all the evils we 
meet to be the dynamical effects of sin, till we find them 
penetrating also the pre-Adamite conditions of being, 
and setting their type in the registers of the geologic 
ages. 


We come now to the matter of the anticipative con- 
sequences; where it will be required of us to speak more 
carefully and to dwell longer. 

And here the first thing to be noted, as respects the 
consequences of sin in our particular world, is that the 
subsequent effects of the sin of other beings might very 
well bring in disorders here that anticipate the arrival 
of man. There had been other moral beings in existence 
doubtless before the creation of man. So, in fact, the 
scriptures themselves testify. They also testify that 
some such were evil and, as we are left to judge, fixed 
in a reprobate character, by long courses of evil. As 
they are shown to have had access to our world, after 
we came in as a race to possess it, so doubtless they had 
been visitors and travelers in it, if we may so speak, 
during all the long geologic eras that preceded our 
coming — hovering it may be in the smoke and steam, 
or watching for congenial sounds and sights among the 
crashing masses and grinding layers, even before the 
huge monsters began to wallow in the ooze of the waters, 
or the giant birds to stalk along the hardening shores. 
What they did, in a or that geologic layer of the 


\ 


186 CONSEQUENCES PREVIOUS 


world, we of course know not. As little do we know 
in what numbers they appeared, or by what deeds of 
violence and wrong they disfigured the existing order. 
We do not even know that the successive extinctions of 
so many animal races, and the deformities found in so 
many of the now existing races, were not somehow refer- - 
rible to the audacity of their wrongs and the bitter woe 
of their iniquities. As already intimated,! the fencing 
of spirits may be an essentially moral affair —such that 
having, by their very nature, the freedom originally of 
the physical universe, the universe might well be visited 
by all such myrmidons of evil and, being so visited, 
might show, as a necessary consequence, the tokens of 
their evil contact or inhabitation. Indeed it might 
well enough show such tokens of their sin in worlds 
they had never visited; for the universe, as we have 
seen, is a whole, and a shock to any part of that whole 
must have its effects of some kind, in every other. How 
far the solidarity of the universe and its fortunes extends, 
or how many things it embraces, we certainly do not 
know, and are therefore not qualified to assume that 
“the whole creation” does not necessarily feel the 
touch of every bad mind and act, and suffer some con- 
sequent disorder in every part. Finding then tokens 
of deformity and prey, and objects of disgust appear- 
ing in the world, long ages before it was inhabited by 
man, we are not hastily to infer that these are not 
actual consequences of sin. ‘They may be such, in the 
strictest terms of retributive causality, though not as 
related to the sins of man. Preceding that, by long 
ages of time, they may yet be subsequent and penal 
effects, as related to older, vaster, outlying popula- 
tions of sinners that had visited, or sent the shock 
1 Chapter IV., pp. 111-116. 


MEDIATED BY INTELLIGENCE 187 


of their sin into the world, before the human race 
appeared. 

It is not proposed, however, to account for all the 
previously existing marks of evil in the world, in this 
manner. It is most agreeable not to do it. For we 
shall easily convince ourselves that vast realms of con- 
sequences, and these as real as any, precede and, in 
rational order, ought to precede, their grounds, or occa- 
sions. Indeed it is the peculiar distinction of conse- 
quences mediated by intelligence, that they generally 
go before, and prepare the coming of events to which 
they relate. Whoever plants a state erects a prison, or 
makes the prison to be a necessary part of his plan; 
which prison, though it be erected before any case of 
felony occurs, is just as truly a consequence of the 
felonies to be, as if it were erected afterward, or were a 
natural result of such felonies. All the machinery of 
discipline in a school, or an army, is prepared by in- 
telligence, perceiving beforehand the certain want of 
discipline hereafter to appear, and is just as truly a 
consequence of the want, as if it were created by the 
want itself, without any mediation of intelligence. 

So also any commander who is managing a cam- 
paign, and has gotten hold of the intended plan of his 
enemy, will be utterly unable to project a plan for him- 
self, or even to order the manceuvers of a day, so as not 
to show a looking at the secret he has gained, and also 
to prepare innumerable things, that are, in some sense, 
consequences of it. What then shall we look for, since 
God’s whole plan of government is, in some highest 
view, a campaign against sin, and is from the beginning 
projected as such, but that all the turnings of his 
counsels and shapings of his creations, should have 
some discoverable reference to it? And how, in that 


188 PREMEDITATION OF GOD, 


case, could they be more truly and rigidly consequences 
of it? Indeed all consequences post are, in fact, antici- 
pative first, and are as really existent, in the laws 
ordained by intelligence to bring them to pass, as they 
are in their actual occurrence in time, afterward. It is 
by no fiction, therefore, and as little by any fetch of 
ingenuity, that we speak of anticipative consequences ; 
for they are the unfailing distinction of every plan 
ordered by intelligence ; every system or scheme, com- 
prehended in the molds of reason, will disclose, in the 
remotest and most subtle beginnings, marks that relate 
to events future and even to issues most remote. 

This too, so far from being any subject of wonder, is 
even a kind of necessary incident of intelligence. For 
every thing that comes into the view of intelligence 
must also pass into the plans of intelligence. How can 
any intelligent being frame a plan, so as to make no 
account of what is really in his knowledge? Or how 
could the all-knowing God arrange a scheme of provi- 
dential order, just as if he did not know the coming 
fact of sin, eternally present to his knowledge? Mind 
works under conditions of unity, and, above all, Per- 
fect Mind. What God has eternally in view, therefore, 
as the certain fact of sin, that fact about which all high- 
est counsel in his government must revolve, and upon 
the due management of which all most eventful and 
beneficent issues in his kingdom depend, must pervade 
his most ancient beginnings and crop out in all the 
layers and eras of his process, from the first chapter of 
creative movement, onward. As certainly as sin is to 
be encountered in his plan, its marks and consequences 
will be appearing anticipatively, and all the grand 
arrangements and cycles of time will be somehow pre- 
luding its approach, and the dire encounter to be main- 


DISCOVERED IN THE FACTS OF SCIENCE; 189 


tained with it. To create and govern a world, through 
long eras of time, and great physical revulsions, yet 
never discover to our view any token that he appre- 
hends the grand cataclysm of sin that is approaching, 
till after the fact is come, he must be much less than a 
wise, all-perceiving Mind. Much room would be left 
for the doubt, whether he is any mind at all; for it is 
the way of mind to weave all counsel and order into a 
web of visible unity. 

It accords also with this general view of the subject, 
as related to mind, that our most qualified teachers in 
science discover so many tokens of premeditation, or 
anticipative thought, in the earlier types and creations 
of the world. ‘“Premeditation prior to creation” !— 
this is the grand, intellectual fact which Mr. Agassiz 
verifies with a confidence so calmly scientific, in his late 
introduction to the study of Natural History. All 
sciences, he shows, are in things because the creator’s 
premeditative thought is there; every first thing ac- 
cordingly shows some premeditative token of every last. 
“‘ Knough has been already said,” he remarks, “to show 
. that the leading thought which runs through the suc- 
cessions of all organized beings, in past ages, is mani- 
fested again in new combinations, in the phases of the 
development of living representatives of these different 
types. It exhibits every where the working of the 
same creative Mind, through all time, and upon the 
whole surface of the globe.”? He passes directly on, 
accordingly, in his next section, to speak of the ‘“ Pro- 
phetic Types among Animals,” discovering, in the 
earlier types of animated being, what reads “like a 
prophecy ” of all the types to come after. ‘“ There are 
entire families,” he says, “among the representatives 


1 Essay on Classification, p. 9. 2Tb., p. 116. 


190 WHICH PREMEDITATION 


of older periods, of nearly every class of animals, which, 
in the state of their perfect development, exemplify 
such prophetic relations, and afford, within the limits 
of the animal kingdom, at least, the most unexpected 
evidence that the plan of the whole creation had been 
maturely considered, long before it was executed.” 
All this, it will be observed, by the mere dry light of 
reason and of positive science, apart from any considera- 
tion of a service to be rendered to revealed religion. 

Prof. Dana, in like manner, though with a somewhat 
different purpose, observes, in “the survey of geological 
facts, a remarkable oneness of system, binding together, 
in a single plan or scheme, the successive events or crea- 
tions, from the earliest coral or shell-fish to man.”’? 
The whole geologic series or progress constitutes, in 
this manner, he maintains, ‘‘ One grand history, with 
the creation of man, the last act in the drama of crea- 
tion.” 

The point of conviction reached by these great mas- 
ters of science, and stated thus in terms of the truest 
intellectual insight, is still not the end of all reason as 
pertaining to the subject in question. If we speak of 
“‘ prophetic types” fulfilled or perfected by future crea- 
tions, there will, in the same manner, be types also that 
have their fulfillment after all creations are ended ; in 
the spiritual state of men, and the remotest issues and 
last ends of human existence. And as all that God or- 
dains or previously creates, will have some respect to 
these last ends, and the conditions of trial and bad ex- 
perience through which they are to be reached, it is 
even probable that, if we had a perfect insight of any 
humblest thing, be it only a mollusc, or an insect, we 


1 Essay on Classification, p. 117. 
2 New Englander, Vol. XVI., p. 96. 


IS UNIVERSAL 191 


should find some subtle type or reference in it, to the 
grandest and most radical facts of the spiritual history 
of the universe. For the premeditation of God and the 
intellectual unity of his thought comprehend more than 
any mere matter of species, or frame of geological order; 
viz., that for which all species and all facts of science 
and all objects of scientific study exist. 

So also, if we speak with Prof. Dana of a “remark- 
able oneness of system,” geology is, in real fact, no sys- 
tem of God, except as we say it by accommodation, 
which doubtless he would also admit; for there is but 
one system and can be only one, as there is but one 
systematizing mind, and one last end, about which 
the inferior combinations, sometimes called systems, re- 
volve. When, therefore, it is remarked that God’s one 
system visibly comprehends all the creation, from coral 
and shell-fish up to man, why not also, we ask, to some- 
thing farther? — to what man will do, and what will be 
done upon him and for him, and finally to all that he 
will become, when God’s last end, that in which all sys- 
tem centers, and for which it works, is finally consum- 
mated? And what can we look for, in this view, but 
that God’s premeditations about sin, the images it 
raises, the counsel it requires, the deaths and abortions 
it works, and the new-creations it necessitates, will be 
coming into view, in all the immense, antedated eras 
and mighty revolutions of the geologic process? By 
the mere unity of God’s intellectual system, they ought 
to appear, and, when they do, they will as truly be con- 
sequences of sin as if they were mere physical effects, 
subsequent in time to the facts. 

There is also another account to be made of these an- 
ticipative consequences of sin; viz., that they are nec- 
essary for great and important uses, in the economy of 


192 GOD UNDERSTANDS HIS WORK 


life as a spiritual concern. Were there no tokens of 
death, deformity, prey, and abortion in the geologic 
eras, previous to man’s arrival, and were it left us to be- 
lieve that just then and there discord broke loose, and 
the whole frame of paradisaic order was shaken to the 
fall, we might imagine that God was overtaken by some 
shock for which he was not prepared, and that the world 
fell out of his hands by some oversight, which probably 
enough he can never effectually repair. But with so 
many tokens of anticipative recognition found laboring, 
and heard groaning, through so many eras of deaths 
and hard convulsions, prior to the sin they represent, 
we see, every one of us, in our state of wrong-doing and 
denial of God, that he understands his work from the 
beginning, is taken by no surprise, meets no shock for 
which he is unprepared, and holds every part of his 
kingdom, even from the foundation of the world, in fit 
connection with the tragic history of sin and salvation 
afterward to be transacted in it. In part, we see the 
world reduced to unnature, infected with disease, shaken 
by discord, marred by deformity, subsequently to the 
fact of sin, just as it must be by the retributive action 
of causes, or by the false conjunctions produced by the 
wrongs and abuses of sin. For the rest, it was antici- 
patively disordered for the sake of order, or in terms of 
necessary unity and counsel, as pertaining to the Goy- 
erning Mind; displaying thus, in clearer and diviner 
evidence, the eternal insight and all-comprehending in- 
telligence of his appointments. For, in being set with 
types all through and from times most ancient, of suffer- 
ing and deformity, prefiguring, in that manner, the be- 
‘ing whose sublime struggles are to have it for their 
field, and showing him, when he arrives, how Eternal 
Forethought has been always shaping it to the mold of 


GEOLOGIC TYPES 193 


his fortunes —thus and thus only could he be fitly as- 
sured, in the wild chaos of sin, of any such Counsel, or 
Power, as can bring him safely through. 

How magnificent also is the whole course of geology, 
of the geologic eras and changes, taken as related to the 
future great catastrophe of man, and the new-creating, 
supernatural grace of hisredemption. It is as if, stand- 
ing on some high summit, we could see the great pri- 
mordial world rolling down through gulfs and fiery 
cataclysms, where all the living races die; thence to 
emerge, again and again, when the Almighty fiat calls 
it forth, a new creation, covered with fresh populations; 
- passing thus, through a kind of geologic eternity, in so 
many chapters of deaths, and of darting, frisking, sing- 
ing life; inaugurating so many successive geologic morn- 
ings, over the smoothed graves of the previous extinct 
races; and preluding in this manner the strange world- 
history of sin and redemption, wherein all the grandest 
issues of existence lie. This whole tossing, rending, 
recomposing process, that we call geology, symbolizes 
evidently, as in highest reason it should, the grand spir- 
itual catastrophe, and Christian new-creation of man; 
which, both together, comprehend the problem of mind, 
and so the final causes or last ends of all God’s works. 
What we see, is the beginning conversing with the end, 
and Eternal Forethought reaching across the tottering 
mountains and boiling seas, to unite beginning and end 
together. So that we may hear the grinding layers of 
the rocks singing harshly — 


Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree— 


and all the long eras of desolation, and refitted bloom 
and beauty, represented in the registers of the world, 


194 GEOLOGIC TYPES 


are but the epic in stone, of man’s great history, before 
the time. 

And of this we are the more impressed, in the fact so 
powerfully shown by Mr. Agassiz, that the successive 
new populations of the geologic eras are, beyond a 
question, fresh creations of God, summoned into being 
by his act, and fashioned in the molds of his thought 5 
impossible to be created or fashioned, by an istin 


laws and forces in nature. He does not say distinetly ** 


hat they are supernatural creations, he might not so 
understand the word, as to be clear of all disrespect in 
regard to it, but the fresh act of creation which he 
affirms and even scientifically proves, exactly answers 
to our definition of the supernatural, as being the action 
of some agent on the conditions of nature from without 
those conditions, and so as to produce results which the 
laws of cause and effect in nature could not produce. 
What a consideration then is it that the great question 
vf the supernatural, which is now put in issue, and upon 
which depends even the faith of Christianity, as a grand 
scpernatural movement of God on the world, is settled, 
ove: and over again, and the verdict as many times re- 
corded in the rocks of the world ! 

In these great anticipative facts of the world, it is 
very ucarly impossible to resist the conviction of the 
eternal and original subserviency even of its solid mate- 
vial structure to religion, and especially to Christianity. 
And exactly this ought to be true, if the Christ and his 
religion be such, and so related to the creation, as we. 
suppose him to be. All God’s most ancient works are 
of course to be found thus in the interest of Christianity, 
answering to it from their distant past, types of its 
coming in the distant future, one with it in design, as 
being issues of the same Eternal Mind. 


OF SIN AND REDEMPTION 195 


It is difficult also to resist the conviction of a use 
more specific-and pointed than those to which we have 
referred. Thus, in respect to misshapen monsters and 
deformed growths, it is a remarkable fact that, as the 
layers of geology rise, and creatures are produced that 
stand higher in the scale of organic perfection, the num- | 
ber of deformities and retrograde shapes is multiplied. 
This fact has been strikingly exhibited by Hugh Miller, 
in refutation of the development theory. It permits 
another use taken as a moral type of human history. 
Thus the serpent race makes no appearance, he observes, 
till we ascend to the tertiary formation, and ‘there it 
wriggles out into being, contemporaneously with the 
more stately and perfect order of mammalia. When 
the mammoth stalks abroad as the gigantic lord of the 
new creation, the serpent creeps out with him, on his 
belly, with his bag of poison hid under the roots of his 
feeble teeth, spinning out three or four hundred lengths 
of vertebre, and having his four rudimental legs 
blanketed under his skin; a mean, abortive creature, 
whom the angry motherhood of nature would not go on 
to finish, but shook from her lap before the legs were 
done, muttering, ominously, “cursed art thou for man’s 
sake above all cattle; upon thy belly shalt thou go and 
dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life,” — powerful 
type of man, the poison of his sin, the degradation of 
his beauty under it, the possible abortion of his noble 
capacities and divine instincts! 

It is also shown by Miller, in the same manner, that 
the fishes lost ground, or grew deformed in organization, 
as the human era drew nigh.1 Regarding man as the 
highest form of organization, having a head, neck, two 
hands, and two feet — the latter answered by the four 


1 Footprints of the Creator, pp. 188-191. 


196 DEFORMITIES INCREASE, 


legs of the beasts, the two wings and legs of the birds, 
and the four fins of the fishes—every creature will be 
most perfect in form, when his parts are adjusted most 
nearly according to the human analogies; and it is 
found that all the first fishes were actually in this type 
of agreement. In the second formation, the forward 
fins are found to have slid up, not seldom, and stuck 
themselves close upon the head, leaving no neck; much 
as if a man were to appear with his arms fastened to his 
head, close behind his ears. In a later formation, both 
fins, representing hands and feet, have mounted into 
the same position; and, as if this were uncomfortable, 
some races have dropped a pair altogether. Then, next, 
in the chalk formation, where the nearest vicinage to 
man is attained, appears the remarkable order that in- 
cludes the plaice, turbot, halibut, and flounder; the two 
latter of which are familiar in our American waters. 
They have the four fins stuck close upon the head. 
They are capsized so as to swim on the flat side. The 
mouth is twisted so as to accommodate their false posi- 
tion. The two sides of the jaw do not match, one being 
much larger and having three or four times as many 
teeth as the other. The backbone is lateral, occupying 
one side of the body. One eye is fixed in the middle 
of the forehead, and the other, which is much smaller, 
is thrust out upon one of the side promontories of the 
face. 
What now does this strange process of deformity, 
chronicled in the rocks of the world, signify? What 
but that God is preparing the field for its occupant; 
| setting it with types of obliquity that shall match, and 
| faithfully figure to man the obliquity and deformity of 
\ his sin? Now then he at last appears, the lord of the 

creation, a being supernatural, clothed in God’s image, 


AS THE HUMAN ERA APPROACHES 197 


a power to be trained up to greatness and glory — only 
he will find his way to the magnificent destiny of char- 
acter appointed him, by struggling on through falls, 
disorders, and perishing abortions, and deformities of 
misdoing, that implicate the whole creation, causing it 
to groan and travail with him in his trial. 

It will signify much to such a being, and especially 
in the advanced ages of time, when he seems to be con- 
quering the world by his sciences, to find that, as the 
creation of God was rising in order, and higher forms 
of life were appearing, in a series to be consummated 
or crowned by the appearing of man, tokens also of 
retrogradation, abortion, defect, deformity, were also 
beginning to appear; as if to foretoken the moral his- 
tory he will begin, and the humiliations through which 
he will require to be led. Coming in originally as lord 
and occupant to have dominion, and taking possession 
of it finally in the higher dominion of science, a most 
strange, powerfully humbling lesson meets him, exactly 
suited to his want, and one that ought to moderate all 
undue conceit of science in him, and temper him to that 
teachable state of inquiry that allows the nobler and 
diviner truths of Christianity to visit his heart. What 
does it mean— let any student of nature answer — what 
does it mean that a Perfect Mind, whose very thoughts 
are beauty, generates in the same era and side by side 
with man, such outrageous deformities as we see, for 
example, in the halibut species? Here is a deep lesson, 
worthy of much study. There is plainly no account to 
be made of such appearances, or facts, till we bring in 
the sovereignty of moral ideas, and assume the necessity 
of moral types and lessons. 

On the whole, as the result of this inquiry into the 
anticipative consequences of sin, we most naturally take 


198 USES OF SUCH DEFORMITIES 


up the conviction, that the world, or what we call the 
creation, is not so much a completed fact as a conatus, 
struggling up concomitantly with the powers that are 
doing battle in it for a character; falling with them in 
the:r fall, rising with them or to rise, to a condition, 
finally, of complete order and beauty. There is much 
to be said for such an expectation, and it appears to be 
just what is held up, in the promise of a new heaven 
and earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. 

The pantheistic form of naturalism, it is well known, 
makes a very different account of the abortions and de- 
formities of the world, and also of its future possibilities. 
It assumes, for a fact, that nature is an incomplete or 
partially developed form of being, going on toward per- 
fection, under laws of development, contained in itself; 
therefore necessarily plunging into mischances, and 
producing uncomely or unperfect fruits. Accordingly 
God, who is in fact the all of nature, is a tardy but 
sublime Naturus, who is sometime about to be, if he 
can attain to a more complete consciousness in his chil- 
dren, and be cleared of the blundering process of devel- 
opment by which necessity is at work to shape him into 
order. Meantime, we ourselves are blundering on with 
him, they suppose, undergoing a like development. 
What we called sin, before we became philosophers, we 
now call development, and excuse ourselves from all 
blame in it because we are only parts of nature, subject 
to her laws ; parts, that is, of God, and subject to the 
eternal fate that rules him. 

That a soul, pressed down by the great questions of 
existence, should sometime reel into this gulf, is scarcely 
a subject of wonder; but no healthy, manly soul, none 
but one that is hag-ridden by the dark and spectral 
difficulties of the world, will long stay in it. There is 


PANTHEISTIC VIEW OF THEM 199 


in the scheme, at first view, a certain imposing air of 
rational magnificence — it includes so much, it handles 
even God and his mystery so coolly, and clears the 
question of evil by a solution so easy. 

But after all it is not cleared. We have called our 
consciousness a fool, it is true, in reporting such a 
thing as sin, and have taken the police of our souls into 
custody to escape the conviction of it, and still the sin 
is here—in us and around us. We can not act our 
part, for any two hours of our life, without assuming 
its reality. What then becomes of our great philosophy, 
when, amusing itself thus in its lofty airs of reason, it 
is yet confronted every moment by the plain, simple 
denial and even scorn of our consciousness ? 

With this too comes the argument of our woe. The 
air of such a creed is too thin to support our life. 
There is no object meeting us to fill our want, there is 
no meaning, or heart, in the mute, dead All; nothing 
in existence to give it significance, or inspire any great 
act or sentiment. We live in a disabled, stunted sub- 
jectivity. The inspiration of faith is replaced by the 
impotence of conceit. The world is a blunder, con- 
sciousness is a lie, the dark things of sin are develop- 
ments, and the All is a Universal Mockery. And then 
what remains but to go back and set up again the great 
first truth, which no mortal can spare for a day, that 
whatever is wanted, is — therefore God, the Living God 
shall be our faith; for him we want, as the comple- 
mental good, without which existence is but a name for 
starvation. 

How many things too are there in the world, after all, 
that can nowise be accounted for by this pantheistic 
theory. If the disorders and deformities of nature are 
God in partial development, how is it conceivable that 


200 PANTHEISTIC VIEW UNSATISFACTORY 


any being in a state so raw, could ever have organized 
such complicated structures —human bodies for example 
—where the design is so evident, the parts so many 
and delicate, the offices so manifold, the unity so per- 
fect. It is inconceivable that any power —call it God, 
or nature, or by whatever name — capable of construct- 
ing an organization so wonderful, should still be 
struggling up into order, through such grotesque and 
misbegotten shapes as are here accounted for, by the 
necessary imperfection of its, or his, development ; com- 
posing first the glorious order of the astronomic mech- 
anism, then faltering afterward in the absurd composition 
of a flounder ; able to fashion a creature of reason, but 
not to stand the criticism of reason; able to start new 
races of living creatures in the successive eras of geol- 
ogy, but having yet no will to start any thing, apart 
from the control of fate. And what can such a doctrine 
make of Jesus Christ, what place does it provide in the 
world for sucha being? If nature can develop nothing 
perfect ; if, by reason of inherent defect, it must needs 
develop itself in blunders of abortion, deformity, and 
pain; will it still suffice to form the mind, fashion the 
beauty, finish the character of a Jesus ? 

But I am assuming here a superiority and perfection 
of order in the character of Jesus, that may not be 
admitted by the pantheist, and as the question is here- 
after to be discussed, and will be made a point of conse- 
quence in the argument, I desist for the present ; only 
requiring it of such as look for a God in development, 
to answer how their blind force, called nature, stagger- 
ing on through the disorders, abortions, and deformities 
of so many ages, and even falling into retrogradations 
as remarkable as its improvements, can be imagined to 
have produced such a son and character as that of Jesus ; 


THE IMMENSE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIN 201 


_ a being, whether perfect or not, so high, so peculiar, 
original, pure, wise, great in goodness ? 


—_——__, 


In this and the preceding chapter, we have now 
traced the consequences of sin: there the consequences 
that must needs follow it, as effects their causes, show- 
ing what results of mischief and disorder it reveals in 
the soul, the body, society, and the world; here account- 
ing for a large display of correspondent facts in the 
geologic history precedent, or before the arrival of man, 
showing that they still are as truly consequences of the 
fact of sin as the others, being only just those marks 
_ that God’s intelligence, planning the world and shaping 
it, even from eternity, to the uses and issues of a trial 
comprehending sin, must needs display. Sin, it will be 
seen, is, in this view, a very great, world-transforming, 
world-uncreating fact, and no such mere casualty, or 
matter by the way, as the superficial naturalism, or half 
naturalistic Christianity of our time, supposes. It is 
that central fact, about which the whole creation of God 
and the ordering of his providential and moral govern- 
ment revolves. The impression of many appears to 
be, that sin is this or that particular act of wrong, 
which men sometimes do, but which most men do not, 
unless at distant intervals ; and who can imagine that 
any thing very serious depends on these rather excep- 
tional misdeeds when, on the whole, the account is 
balanced by so many shows of virtue? The triviality 
and shallowness of such conceptions are hardly to be 
spoken of with patience. It is not seen that when a 
man even begins to sin he must needs cast away the 
principle, first, of all holy obedience, and go down, thus, 
into a general lapse of condition, to be a soul broken 
loose from principle and separated from the inspirations 


} 


202 SIGNIFICANCE OF SIN DISCOVERED 


of God. Only a very little philosophy too, conceiving - 
the fact that sin is the acting of a substance, man, as 
he was not made to act, must suffice to the discovery 
that, in a system, or scheme of perfect order, it will 
start a ferment of discord among causes, that will prop- 
agate itself in every direction, carrying wide-spread 
desolation into the remotest circles. The whole soli- 
darity of being in the creation, physical and spiritual, 
is necessarily penetrated by it and configured to it. 
Character, causes, things prior and post, all that God 
embraces in the final causes of existence, somehow feel 
it, and the whole creation groans and travails for the 
pain of it. The true Kosmos, in the highest and most 
perfectly ideal sense of that term, does not exist. 
Nature is become unnature, and stopping at the point 
reached, which of course we do not, we must even say 
that the creation of God is a failure. 

But there is an objection to be anticipated here which 
requires our attention, before we dismiss this part of 
our subject. It is that no proper Kosmos, no ecrystal- 
line order of nature, according to the view stated in 
this chapter, has ever yet existed. For, if we speak of 
the state of unnature as a consequence of sin, that state 
of unnature has existed, in part, or as far as it should, 
anticipatively, through all the precedent eras and geo- 
logic processes of the world. The true ideal system 
of nature, therefore, has never existed, and there was 
never any such condition, or chime of order to fall from, 
or to shatter by sin, as we are trying all the while to 
suppose. All which is certainly true, if we must go 
entirely back of God’s purposes and beyond them 
to find it; for what we have been tracing as the 
anticipative consequences of sin is nothing but the 
working of his ancient counsel concerning it. But 


THE KOSMOS STILL EXISTS 203 


the real truth is that nature, original and true nature, 
has existed and does now exist; for, if we call our 
present state, as we truly should, a condition of un- 
nature, we mean by it nothing more than that the 
causes included in pure nature are working now more 
or less retributively, painfully, diseasedly, and so as to 
create a state of dislocation in the outward harmonies; 
a state of incapacity and bondage in the spiritual aspi- 
rations of the soul. Nature zs unnature, when her 
causes are acting retributively — they are not, in such 
cases, discontinued, or thrown out of their law; but 
they act, in their law and under it, as perfectly and 
systematically as ever. The unnaturalness of our pres- 
ent state under sin consists, not in the fact that nature 
is gone by, or is broken up, but only in the fact that her 
causes are all at work on the contrary ingredient, sin. 
It is as if a good and healthy stomach were at work 
upon a stone, to digest it —still it is acting by its own 
laws and powers, as truly as if the stone were meat, 
though its acting is only a throe of distress. Were 
every thing, indeed, now rolling on, in sweetest bonds 
of harmony, according to the pure ideal of what we 
call nature, nothing of bad consequence or penal and 
retributive action any where appearing in it, no dis- 
order of sin visible any where as a fact of anticipation, 
still nature would not be more truly extant than now ; 
for the disorder and unnature we speak of are really 
order and nature chastising the false fact, sin; which 
process of chastisement and groaning we call unnature, 
only because it does not answer, thus far, to the ideal 
working of the scheme, disturbed by no such enemy of 
God and all good as it has here met. Nor does it make 
any the least difference, except’ with some speculative 
wordsman, grubbing under space and time, whether 


204 NATURE AS A WHOLE, 


death and prey and other like consequences of sin 
began to work, before the arrival here of man, or only 
after. If God’s Whole Plan respects the fact of sin 
before the fact, the scheme of nature was none the less 
real or perfect, because of the unnature working antici- 
patively in it, any more than it follows that the unnature 
subsequent has discontinued nature, whose retaliatory 
action it really is, and nothing more. 

Unnature then—this is our conclusion—a far- 
reaching, all-comprehensive state of unnature, is the 
consequence of sin. It mars the body, the soul, society, 
the world, all time before and after. What an argu- 
ment then have we, and especially from the antedated 
tokens of evil, for the belief that God’s original plan 
comprehends a rising side, an economy supernatural, 
that shall complement the disorder and fall of nature, 
having power to roll back its currents of penal misery 
and bring out souls, into the established liberty and 
beauty of holiness. How manifest is it in the world’s 
birth, that God, from the first, designs it for a second 
birth ; some grand palingenesia that shall raise the fall 
of nature and make existence fruitful. It has been a 
great fault, as was just now intimated, that we have 
made so little of sin. It is either nothing, or else it is 
a great deal more than it is conceived to be by the 
multitude who admit its existence. The mental and 
moral philosophers make nothing of it, going on to 
construct their sciences, so called, precisely as if the 
soul had received no shock of detriment; and even the 
most orthodox theologians do scarcely more than score 
it with guilty conviction, regarding it seldom as a 
dynamic force, and then with a comprehension too 
restricted to allow any true impression of its import. 
Hence, in great part, the general incredulity in regard 


BECOME UNNATURE 205 


to the supernatural facts of Christianity. There can 
be nothing supernatural, we think, because it would 
violate the integrity of nature. The integrity of 
nature! What but a world of unnature has it become 
already? And what has sent these hard pangs into 
it and through it but a supernatural force, even the 
human will; for this, we have seen, is a power super- 
natural, as truly as God, though not equal in degree; 
able to act on the lines of causes and vary their con- 
junctions from without, even as he is represented in 
the Christian truth to do. Hence the disorder and 
disease; hence the groaning and travailing in pain 
together of the whole creation—it is all the super- 
natural work, the bad miracle of sin. No other name 
will fitly name it. Indeed, if there should be, some- 
where in the universe, a race of beings that have never 
sinned, and they should have it set before them, in all 
its consequences to the physical order of things, they 
would look upon it, we suspect, as a miraculous agency, 
exerted in God’s universe opposite to himself. And 
they would begin, we fear, to say with Mr. Hume, 
unless they were better philosophers than he, that such 
a miracle is wholly incredible ; that the confidence they 
have in the beneficent, harmonious action of nature, is 
too strong to be broken by any possible testimony to 
such doings. Therefore this tremendous, all-revolu- 
tionizing miracle must be.a fiction. 

Of course it is not a miracle. It is only a fact super- 
natural, a grand assault of man’s supernatural agency 
upon the world. We shall speak more definitely of 
miracles hereafter. For the present, we only say that 
the supernatural agency of God in the world’s redemp- 
tion, is now shown to be most clearly wanted; and we 
do not perceive wherein it is more incredible that God 


206 IS THERE TO BE A REMEDY? 


should act, in his way, upon the lines of natural causes, 
than that we should do it, in ours. Of course he will 
act with a higher sovereignty, worthy of himself. His 
divine supernatural power will be divine, our human 
will be human. If we have broken or clouded the 
crystal and can not restore its transparency, he can. If 
we bring deformity, he will bring beauty. If we die, 
he will bid us live. Will he do this? That is now the 
question that remains. 


CHAPTER VIII 
NO REMEDY IN DEVELOPMENT, OR SELF-REFORMATION 


WE are now at the point of catastrophe in God’s plan, 
where it is next in order to look about for some remedial 
agency, or dispensation, that shall restore the lapse and 
bring out those results of order and happiness, that were 
proposed by God, as we must believe, in his act of crea- 
tion. Are we then shut up to nature and the hope that 
she will surmount her own catastrophe, or may we 
believe that her inherent weakness will be complemented 
by a supernatural and divine movement, that shall 
organize a new economy of life? 

The former is the ground taken by all the naturaliz- 
ing classes of our time. Nothing can take place, they 
say, which is not operated under and by the laws of 
nature. To believe that any thing can take place 
which is from without, or from above the laws of 
nature, is unphilosophical and savors of credulity. 
That there is such a thing as misdirection they will 
admit, and some will admit also the fact of sin; and it, 
will be agreed by them all that, in consequence either 
of misdirection, or of sin, there are a great many appar- 
ent disasters and disorders in the world, or especially 
in human society, that want some kind of remedy. Our 
present object is to look into their principal remedies, or 
grounds of expected restoration, and try what virtue 
there is in them. They are two, or presented under 

207 


208 NO REMEDY IN DEVELOPMENT 


two distinct forms, both of which may be taken as rival 
gospels opposite to Christianity. 

By the class who formally reject or ignore Christianity, 
development is regarded as the universal panacea —all 
the apparent evils of the world are to be cured by 
development. 

The class who professedly teach and believe the 
Christian gospel, reducing it still to a mere scheme of 
ethics, or natural virtue, rely more on the individual 
will to be exerted in self-government, self-culture, and 
the doing of justice, mercy, and other good works. 

Of these rival gospels, both from within the terms of 
nature, I will now speak, in their order. 

I. Of development, or as it is often phrased, the 
natural progress of the race. 

The world is just now taken, as never before, with 
ideas of progress. The human race, it is conceived, 
exists under laws of progress. The philosophers, or 
would-be philosophers, have even undertaken to reduce 
the laws of progress to a scientific statement. They 
conceive that all the advanced races of mankind began 
at the level of the savage state, and have been set 
forward to their present pitch of culture, civilization, 
wealth, and liberty, by laws of development in mere 
nature. The multitude go after them, embracing the 
welcome idea of progress only the more enthusiastically, 
that they are so much taken with the new word develop- 
ment, conceiving that there is great science in it, or, at 
least, some unknown kind of power. If there are any 
evils, or bitter woes in society, development is going to 
cure them ; for the laws of development are at work to 
produce progress, and they will as certainly do it, as 
the laws of matter will determine its motions. All 
crime and sin are going finally to be cured in this 


NO REMEDY IN DEVELOPMENT 209 


manner, and character is going finally to blossom, on 
the broken stock of nature, even as flowers are developed 
out of stocks not broken, and roots not poisoned by 
disease. Finding thus a gospel of progress in the world 
itself and the mere laws of existence, what need of any 
such antiquated mythology as the Christian gospel 
brings us? Or, if the argument is not openly stated 
in this manner, still it is virtually adopted; for how 
many that suppose Christianity to be true, still have it 
only as a thing by the way, a straw floating down this 
flood and passing on with us, to see the brave work 
human progress is doing. If it is not called a myth or 
wild tradition, still the really trusted gospel is phre- 
nology, chemistry, and the other new sciences, with their 
grand economic creations, such as telegraphs, railroads, 
steamboats, and the like— (not omitting the new and 
better Bible discovered in the oracles of necromancy); 
and these are going at last to raise the world, no thanks 
to Christianity, into a state of universal brotherhood 
and felicity! The lowest charlatans and some of the 
most cultivated savants hold much the same language, 
and trust in the same gospel of development. 

Now that there is, or should be, such a thing as devel- 
opment, we certainly admit. All the human faculties 
are capable of development by exercise or training, and 
every human being will, of necessity, be developed to a 
certain degree, both in mind and body, by the growth 
of years and the necessary struggles of life. But that 
human society was ever carried forward, by a single 
shade, in the matter of religious virtue, under mere 
laws of natural development, we utterly deny. It is 
even a fair subject of doubt whether any nation, or race 
of men, was ever advanced in civilization by inherent 
laws of progress. Certain it is that no individual was 


210 CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT 


ever cleared of sin by development, or restored even 
proximately to the state of primal order and upright- 
ness ; equally so that the vast, far-spreading, organic 
woes of the world are forever immedicable by any such 
remedy. 

In one view, it may be rightly said that the whole 
object of God, in our training, is to develop in us a 
character of eternal uprightness; developing also, in 
that manner, as a necessary consequence, grand possi- 
bilities of social order and well being ; though, when se 
we thus speak, we include the fact of sin and the engage- 
ment with it of a supernatural grace, to lift up the 
otherwise remediless fall of nature. But this, if we 
must have the word, is Christian development ; a devel- 
opment accomplished, by carrying us across and up out 
of the gulf of unnature, where the hope of all progress 
and character was ended. We are developed, in this 
sense, by and through an experience of that state of 
wrong, whose woe it is that it is the fall of nature and, 
in that sense, the end of all development. But this, 
it will be seen, is not the popular doctrine of progress, 
which assumes the fact of.a progress in right lines, 
without any call for supernatural interference, without 
any regenerative or new-creative process. There may 
be hard throes of suffering experience and bitter strug- 
gles with ‘individual and social evils, but time, it is 
supposed, will teach, and experience redeem, and so the 
great battle of natural development will lead to final 
victory. In this manner, progress, it is supposed, will 
at last cure all the evils which we have been recapitu- 
lating as the fruit and fall of sin. That such a hope is 
groundless we will now undertake to show. 

Consider, first, the savage state, whence it is continu- 
ally assumed that history and civilization spring. The 


SAVAGE RACES MAKE NO PROGRESS 211 


doctrine is that all the advanced nations of mankind 
began as savages, and that all the peoples of the world 
now existing, are on their way up, out of the savage 
state, into civilization and a state of social virtue. 
Contrary to this, no savage race of the world has ever 
been raised into civilization, least of all, into a state of 
virtue, by mere natural development. All which is 
evident by just that which distinguishes the savage 
state ; for it is the principal and, in fact, only compre- 
hensive distinction of the savage races, that they are 
such as have fallen below progress, living on from age 
to age without progress, and sometimes quite dying 
out ; for the simple reason that there is no sufficient 
capacity of progress left to perpetuate their life in 
proximity with more advanced races. They are beings, 
or races physiologically run down, or become effete, 
under sin; fallen at last below progress, below society, 
become a herd no longer capable of public organiza- 
tion, and a true, social life. It signifies nothing for 
such races to ask more time ; time can do nothing for 
them better than extermination. It is well, if even 
a gospel and a faith above nature can now get such 
hold of them as to raise them. They are, in fact, just 
as far off from the original unpracticed, undeveloped 
state of nature, as the most advanced races; and, as 
David said over the child —“TI shall go to him but he 
shall not return to me,” so it is possible for the living 
and advanced races to go downward, but never for 
these dead ones, unassisted, to rise. We have proofs 
enough that peoples advanced in culture may become 
savages, but no solitary example of a race of savages 
that have risen to a civilized state by mere develop- 
ment. And the real fact is, that we may much better 
assert a law of natural deterioration, than a law of nat- 


212 THE SAVAGE RACES 


ural progress ; for, apart from some influence or aid of 
a supernatural kind, the deterioration of society, under 
the penal mischiefs of sin, would be universal. By the 
supposition it should be so; for, as all society is under 
sin, it is of course suffering the retributive action of 
penal causes, and as all discord propagates only greater 
discord and can not propagate harmony, it follows that 
the run of society under sin must be downward, from 
bad to worse, unless interrupted by some remedial 
agency from without. 

It is somewhat difficult to test our particular opinion 
on this subject by actual examples; for we can not 
commonly trace the unhistoric and subtle methods, in 
which any race of men may have been impregnated 
with new possibilities ; sometimes by other religions, 
with which they are made conversant by commerct-and 
travel ; sometimes by sporadic and supernatural revela- 
tions ; traces of which are discernible, not only in the 
extra-Jewish examples of Jethro, Job, and Cornelius, 
but in the literature of all the cultivated races, and 
sometimes, here and there, in the demonstrations even 
of the wild races. That the old Pelasgic race was 
raised, by a mere natural progress, to the high pitch of 
culture displayed by the Greek civilization, we have no 
reason whatever to believe. Their literature, from 
Hesiod downward, is sprinkled with too many traces of 
sentiment, derived from the Jewish and Egyptian reli- 
gions, to suffer the opinion that they are a nation thus 
advanced by the simple motherhood of nature. The 
Roman civilization was, in fact, a propagation of the 
Greek, with the advantage of a right infusion from her 
serious and venerable fathers, who, like Numa, com- 
muned with invisible powers in retired groves and silent 
grottoes. The Teutonic race, often named as an exam- 


MAKE NO PROGRESS 213 


ple of natural development, is known to have been set 
forward by the civilizations it conquered and its early 
conversion to the Christian faith. Meantime how many 
great and powerful races have become extinct. We 
look for the Ninevites with as little hope as for Ninus 
himself. The Assyrians, Babylonians, and Medes are 
also vanished. The Egyptians, Phenicians, Etruscans, 
Romans, once the great powers of history and civiliza- 
tion, are extinct. The Aztec race, run down to such a 
state of incapacity as not even to understand their own 
monuments, or know by whom they were built, we 
rightly call savages, and look upon as having just now 
come to their vanishing point. 

What now does it mean that so many races, empires, 
languages of the world, have become extinct? Is this 
a token of infallible development? Do we see in this 
the proof that all the evil and sin of the world are going, 
at last, to be surmounted and cleared by the inevitable 
law of progress? What would our new prophets of 
development say, if they were told, when exulting so 
confidently in the glorious future of their own and all 
other nations, that a day will certainly be reached 
when the Anglo-American race is become an extinct 
race, Washington a contested locality, and the Consti- 
tution of the United States a hopeless search of the 
world’s antiquarians? Distant as such an expectation 
may be from our thoughts, and contrary as it may be 
to the illimitable progress of which we hear so often, it 
is only that which has happened a hundred times 
already, and, Christianity apart, may as well happen 
again. 

We have spoken of the evident falsity of the supposi- 
tion, that all the advancement of the world begins at an 
originally savage state; that being, in fact, no first, but 


214 THE SAVAGE IS NOT A FRESH, 


an old and decayed state rather, where long ages of 
deterioration under sin have finally extirpated the 
original possibilities of advancement. The first stage 
of human society was simply a stage of crudity, or crude 
capacity, and was not more remote from the state of 
high civilization than it was from the low, decrepit, 
animalized condition which we now designate by the 
term savage. All races begin together at the state of 
simple being, or crude capacity, and only make the 
fatal leap of sin together. After that they separate, 
some ascending, led up by their holy seers and lawgiv- 
ers, and others, not having or not giving heed to such, 
going down the scale of penal deteriorations to become 
savages. A full half of the globe is peopled thus by 
tribes which are either reduced to the savage condition, 
or else are far on their way toward it ; humbled in capac- 
ity, physically deteriorated, and that, to such a degree, 
that the springs of recuperative force appear to be quite 
gone. Considering now the certain fact, that all these 
had their beginning in a simply crude state, having 
the same high possibilities and affinities, which the races 
had that are now most advanced, what are we to think 
of mere development? This advantage or condition of 
crude possibility they had, many thousands of years 
ago, and the result is what we see. Having run down 
thus miserably under the boasted gospel of natural 
progress, what hope is there in this gospel for the 
final restoration of all things ? 

It is fatally opposed too by the geologic analogies. 
| Here it stands, the settled verdict of science itself, that 
the successive eras of vegetable and animal life have not 
been introduced, by any law of progress, or by any 
mere development of nature and her forces. The 
attempts that have been made to show this are even 


\ ‘ - BUT AN OLD STATE 215 


kpitiable failures. They ask us, in fact, to believe greater 
miracles in the name of development than any we en- 
counter in the gospel history. Thus, we have displayed 
in the new creations of the rocks themselves, a standing 
type of that moral new creation, by which the distem- 
pered and fallen races of the world are to be raised up. 
Lest we should think any such divine intervention 
incredible, and try to find some better hope for man in 
the gospel of development, we are here familiarized with 
the fact, that no such law of development has been able 
to carry on the geologic progress of the planet, and that 
God has been wont, in all its ancient depopulations, to 
insert new germs of life creatively, and people it with 
living creatures fresh from his hand. 

Again it is a consideration scarcely less impressive, 
that God has managed to insert into the physiological 
history of animals and vegetables an always present, 
living type of the process itself, by which, as transcend- 
ing all mere development, his supernatural remedy 
operates ; so that we may see it, as it were, with our 
eyes, and become familiar withit. I refer to that 
wondrous, inexplicable function of healing, discovered 
in the restoration or repair of animals and vegetables, 
that are wounded or sick. When a tree, for example, 
is hacked, or bruised, a strange nursing process forth- 
with begins, by which the wound is healed. A new 
bark is formed on the edges of the wound, by what 
method no art of man can trace, the dead matter is 
thrown off, and a growth inward narrows the breach, 
till finally the two margins meet and the tissues inter- 
weave, and not even a scar is left. So in all the flesh 
wounds of animals, and the fractureseven of bones. So 
too in regard to all diseases not terminating mortally ; 
they pass a crisis, where the healing function, whatever 


216 THE HEALING FUNCTION 


it be, triumphs over the poison of the disease and a 
recovery follows, in which the whole flesh and fiber 
appear even to be produced anew. 

Here then is a healing power, whose working we can 
no way trace, and one that, if we look at the causes of 
disintegration present, appears even to accomplish what 
is impossible. Regarding the body as a machine — and 
taken as a merely material organization what is it more ? 
— it is plainly impossible for it to heal, in this manner, 
and repair itself. The disordered watch can never run 
itself into good repair. In machines, disorder can only 
propagate and aggravate disorder, till they become a 
wreck. The physicians and physiologists call the 
strange healing function the vis medicatriz ; as if it were 
some gentle, feminine nurse, hidden from the sight, 
whose office it is to expel the poisons, knit the fractures, 
and heal the wounds of bodies. And as names often 
settle the profoundest questions, so it appears to be 
commonly taken for granted here, that the healing 
accomplished is wrought by a nursing function thus 
named, as one of the inherent properties of vital sub- 
stances. It may be so or it may not; for the whole 
question is one that is involved in the profoundest mys- 
tery. The healing property may be one of the incidents 
of life itself, or it may be a distinct power whose office 
it is to be the guard and medicating nurse of life, or it 
may be the working of a grand supernatural economy 
set in closest vicinage to nature, to be the physical, 
visible, always present token of a like supernatural 
economy in the matters of character and the soul. But 
whatever view we take of this healing power in physi- 
ology, or whatever account we make of it, these two 
points are clear. 

First that the healing accomplished is no fact of 


NO MODE OF DEVELOPMENT 217 


development. There is no difficulty in seeing how 
existing tissues and organs may create extensions within 
their own vascular sphere, and this is development. 
But where a new skin or bark is to be created, or a new 
interlocking made of parts that are sundered, the ducts 
and vesicles that might act in development, being parted 
and open at their ends, want mending themselves. 
Thus, when the parts of a fractured bone are knit to- 
gether, and we see them reaching after each other, as it 
were, across a chasm, where there are no vessels to 
bridge it or carry across the lines of connection, devel- 
opment might well enough make the parts longer, but 
how could it make them unite across the fracture by 
which they are separated? The development of a tree, 
wounded by some violence, would only enlarge the 
wound, just in proportion to the enlargement of the 
surface which the bark should cover. A fevered body 
does not cure itself by development. As little can we | 
imagine that the restored health and volume of the 
body is created by the development of the fever. No 
shade of countenance therefore is given to the hope that 
human development, under the retributive woes of sin, 
will be any sufficient cure of its disorders, or will set 
the fallen subjects of it forward, in a course of social 
progress. 

This also, secondly, is equally clear, that, as the mys- 
terious healing of bodies yields the development theory 
_ no token of favor, it is only a more impressive type, 
on that account, of some grand restorative economy, by 
which the condition of unnature in sculs and the world 
is to be supernaturally regenerated — just such a type 
as, regarding the relations of matter to mind, and of 
things natural to things spiritual, we might expect to 
find incorporated, in some large and systematic way, in 


218 THE HEALING FUNCTION 


the visible objects and processes of the world. And 
how much does the healing of bodies signify, when asso- 
ciated thus with the grand elemental disorder and 
breakage of sin! What is it, in fact, but a kind of 
glorious, every where visible sacrament, that tokens life, 
and hope, and healing invisible, for all the retributive 
woes and bleeding lacerations of our guilty, fallen state, 
as a race apostate from God. 

Hence too, probably, the fact that transactions of 
healing are so closely connected, the world over, with 
sentiments of religion. Perhaps the fact is due, in part, 
to some latent association that connects diseases with 
sin and, to much the same extent, connects the hope of 
healing with some possibility of a divine medication. 
However this may be, the mystery of healing, as we are 
constituted, stands in close affinity with God and the 
faith of his supernatural operation. Thus it was that 
the priests both of the Egyptians and the Greeks were 
their physicians, and that their precepts and preseripts 
of healing were kept in their temples. Esculapius, too, 
the god of medicine, had his own altars and priests. 
At a later period, the Essenes and the Christian monks, 
accounted by some to be their successors, had their 
pious explorations of diseases and the sacred powers of 
remedies ; reducing medicine itself to a function of reli- 
. gion. Later still, Paracelsus himself began the restora- 
tion of medicine, as a kind of chemical theosophy. And 
as Christianity itself classes healing among the spir- 
itual gifts, and calls the elders of the church to pray for 
the sick; so we find that some of our Indian tribes have 
traditions of one whom, as related to the Great Spirit, 
they call the Uncle, and who came into the world by 
a mysterious advent, long ages ago, and instituted the 
*“ Grand Medicine,” which is, in fact, their religion. 


NOT DEVELOPMENT 219 


It is difficult to resist the impression, in such demon- 
strations as these, of some very profound connection 
between the healing of bodies and the faith of a super- 
natural grace of healing for the disorders of souls. 
Else why this persistent tendency in men’s opinions of 
healing, to associate the fevered body and the leprous 
mind, and seek the medication of both, in the common 
rites of religion. 

But there is a shorter argument with the scheme that 
proposes to find a remedy for all the ills of character 
and society, in what it calls a more complete develop- 
ment. It is this: that no one ever dares practically 
to act on the faith of such a doctrine, whether in the 
state or the family. The civil law is, in fact, and to a 
very great extent, a restraint on development, and has 
its merit in the fact that it is. It forbids men to unfold 
themselves freely, in their base passions and criminal 
instigations, and deters them from it. Were it not for 
the state, protecting itself by such means against devel- 
opment, society would be quite dissolved. What we 
discover in families is even more remarkable. There 
are multitudes of parents that believe, as they suppose, 
with all their hearts,in the good day coming through 
the progress of human development. And as part of 
the same general faith, their views of education make 
it to consist simply in educing or developing just what 
is in the child’s nature. But they do not act on that 
principle in the house, and dare not; though probably 
enough they are never aware of the fact. They main- 
tain a family regimen that consists, to a great degree, 
not in development but in repression. To let the child . 
have his way and act himself out freely, without re- 
straint. is no part-of their plan. Probably it never 
occurs to them as a rational possibility. Just contrary 


220 WE HAVE NO FAITH IN DEVELOPMENT 


to this, they lay their foundations in a restriction of 
natural development ; hoping in that manner to extir- 
pate unruly and base instigations, and form a habit in 
the child of doing better things than he would most 
naturally do. And it is remarkable that, in the fulfill- 
ing of their office, which is so far an office of repression, 
they are acting as a force supernatural. According to 
our definition, it will be remembered that human wills 
are strictly supernatural in their action, and the child, 
we here discover, spends all the first years of his life 
under the regulative and repressive action of such wills. 
He is in them, in fact, more truly than he is in nature, 
and the house is a little creation made for him by their 
keeping. He is handled in infancy as they direct, fed 
as they direct when he begins to ask for food, clothed 
as they direct, commanded, limited, forbidden, repressed, 
and so is finally grown up to an age of self-regulation. 
The process may be called his development, but the 
most remarkable thing in it is that it is a restraint of 
development. Why this restraint? If development 
is going to be the gospel of the world’s redemption, 
what makes it wise, in the common sense of the world, 
to restrain that gospel? Are the ills of society and the 
world going to be cured too soon? If development can 
do all that is promised, why not give it a hearty god- 
speed every where, and let every human creature, old 
and young, act out what is in him, in the speediest, 
most unrestricted manner possible? A glance in this 
direction is sufficient to show us that all we hear of in- 
evitable progress, and the necessary laws of develop- 
ment, is hollow and deceitful. It is not development 
but new creation that can bring us the remedies we 
look for. Nature has powers and capabilities that want 
development. Reduced to real unnature (which is her 


SELF-REFORMATION 221 


present state), she also has disordered passions, base 
instigations, greedy appetites, ferocious animosities, pro- 
pensities to cunning and falsehood, which want no 
development, and which, if they are developed, unre- 
strained, annihilate all chance of progress, and even 
forbid the existence of society. Mere development 
therefore promises nothing. 

We come now — 

II. To the other rival gospel, that which proposes to 
dispense with all supernatural aids, and to restore the 
disorders and the fallen character of sin, by a self-cul- 
tivated, or self-originated virtue. 

Expectation is here rested on the human will, which, 
in our view, may be done, it will be said, with greater 
reason, since we make it, even by definition, a super- 
natural power. But there are different orders or de- 
grees, it must be observed, of supernatural power ; the 
human, the angelic, the divine ; which all are alike in 
the fact that the will acts from itself, uncaused in its 
action, but very unlike as regards potency, or the ex- 
tent of their efficacy. What we are endeavoring, in 
our argument, to show, is the fact of a divine supernat- 
ural agency concerned in the upraising or redemption 
of man. But if man can raise himself, by his own will, © 
that is, by his humanly supernatural force, then plainly 
there is no need of a divine intervention, from without 
and above nature, to regenerate his fallen state. Still 
it will not be denied by the class of teachers most for- 
ward in maintaining this form of naturalism, that all 
religious virtue is dependent, in a certain sense, on the 
concourse and spiritual helping of God ; only that con- 
course and helping, it will be said, belongs to the scheme 
of nature, and never undertakes to help us out of the 
retributive woes and disorders of nature; for nature is 


222 SELF-RESTORATION 


the system of God, including all he does or can ration- 
ally be expected to do. To imagine that such a mode 
of piety, or religious virtue, should be maintained by 
the human will, would be less extravagant if there were 
no sin, no consequent woes and disorders ; though even 
then it would be the faith of a God imprisoned, or en- 
tombed, in the inexorable laws of nature; with whom 
the soul could aspire to no real converse and could have 
no social sympathy, more than with a wall. Before 
this unbending prisoner of fate, this nature-God, this 
dead wall, he might go on to dress up a character and 
fashion a merely ethical virtue ; cultivating truth, hon- 
esty, justice, temperance, kindness, piling up acts of 
merit, and doing legal works of charity; but to call 
this character religious, however plausible the show it 
makes, is only an abuse of the term. Religious charac- 
ter is not legah It is an inspiration — the Life of God 
in the Soul of Man; and no such life can ever quicken 
a soul except in the faith of a Living God, which here 
is manifestly wanting. Not even the pure angels could 
subsist in such a style of virtue; for it is the strength 
and beatitude of their holiness, that it is no will-work 
in them, but an eternal, immediate inspiration of God. 
Consciously it is not theirs, but the inbreathing life of 
their Father. 

But this ethical gospel, this religion acted as in pan- 
tomime, becomes even more insipid and absurd, when 
the fact of sin, with all its consequences of distemper 
and disorder, is admitted. Now the problem is to find 
by what power the original harmony of nature can be 
reconstructed, and its currents of penal disaster turned 
back. Can the human will do this? That it can act 
upon the courses of nature we know, —sin itself indeed 
is the staring and incontrovertible proof that it can. 


IS IMPOSSIBLE 223 


But it does not follow, as we have said already, that the 
power which has broken an egg, or shivered a crystal, 
can mend it. That is a thing more difficult, and de- 
mands a higher power. 

Consider simply the change that is needed to restore 
the lapsed integrity of a soul. Its original spontaneity 
to good is gone, its silver cord of harmony is broken, 
the sweet order of life is turned into a tumult of inward 
bitterness, its very laws are become its tormentors. All 
its curious, multiform, scarcely conceivable functions, 
submitted by its laws to the will, are now contesting 
always with each other and are wholly intractable to its 
sovereignty. And still it is expected of the will, that 
it is going to gather them all up into the primal order, 
and reconstruct their shattered unity! Why, it were 
easier, a thousand fold, for man’s will to gather all the 
birds of the sky into martial order, and march them as 
a squadron through the tempests of the air! Mani- 
festly none but God can restore the lapsed order of the 
soul. He alone can reconstruct the crystalline unity. 
Which, if he does, it will imply an acting on those 
lines of causes in its nature, by whose penal efficacy 
it is distempered ; and that is, by the supposition, a 
supernatural operation. 

Besides, the work is really not done till the subject 
is restored to a virtue whose essence is liberty. And 
- how is man, by his mere will, to start the flow of lib- 
erty? He may do this and do that, and keep doing 
this and that, carefully, punctiliously, suffering no 
slackness. But it will be work, work only, and the 
play of liberty will never come. He can never reach 
the true liberty till an inspiration takes him, and the 
new birth of God’s Spirit makes him a son. The light 
he manufactures will be darkness, or at best a pale 


224 SELF-RESTORATION 


phosphorescence, till Christ is revealed within. His 
self-culture may fashion a picture with many marks of 
grace, but the quickening of God alone can make it live. 
If he relish his work in a degree, it will be the relish of 
conceit —there is no fountain of heavenly joy in it, 
bursting up from unseen depths within. He will ad- 
vance fitfully, eccentrically, and without balance, mak- 
ing a grimace here, while he fashions a beauty there ; 
for there is no balance of order and proportion till his 
faith is rested in God, and his life flows out from the 
divine plenitude and perfection. Meantime his ideals 
will grow faster than his attainments, and if he is not 
wholly drunk up in conceit, he will be only the more 
afflicted and baffled, the greater his pertinacity. O, if 
there be any kind of life most sad, and deepest in the 
scale of pity, it is the dry, cold impotence of one who 
is honestly set to the work of his own self-redemption ! 
J Do we then affirm, it will be asked, the absolute ina- 
bility of a man to do and become what is right before 
God? That is the Christian doctrine, and there is none 
that is more obviously true. Wherein, then, it may 
also be asked, is there any ground of blame for contin- 
uance in sin? Because, we answer, there is a Living 
God engaged to help us, and inviting always our accept- 
ance of his help. Nor is this any mere gracious ability, 
such as constitutes the joy of some and the offense of 
others. No created being, of any world, not even the 
new-formed man before his fall, nor the glorified saint, 
nor the spotless angel, had ever any possibility of holi- 
ness, except in the embrace of God. This is the normal 
condition of all souls, that they be filled with God, 
acted by God, holding their will in his, irradiated always 
by his all-supporting life. Just this it is that constitutes 
the radical idea of religion and differs it from a mere 


IS IMPOSSIBLE 225 


ethical virtue. God is the prime necessity of all reli- 
gious virtue, and is only more emphatically so to beings 
under sin. The necessity is constituent, not penal; it 
becomes penal only when communications originally 
given to the fallen, but now cast away by their sin, 
require to be restored. 

There is really no difficulty in this question of dis- 
ability under sin, save that which is created by the fogs 
of unintelligent speculation. It is taken extensively, 
as if it were a question regarding man’s inherent, inde- 
pendent ability, when in fact he has no such ability to 
any thing. Can he obey God, or not? is he able to do 
God’s will, or not? is the question raised; and it is 
understood and discussed as being a question that turns 
on the absolute quantities of the man, and not in any 
respect on relative aids and conditions without; much 
as if the question were whether he has weight, apart 
from all relative weights or attractions? or whether he 
can stand alone, apart from any thing to stand upon? 
or whether he has power to live a year, apart from all 
food and light and shelter and air? The true question 
of ability is different. It is this: whether the subject 
is able to rise into a holy life, taken as insphered in 
God, and all the attractive, transforming, and supporting 
influences of the grace of God? Apart from this, he 
certainly is not able. By mere working on himself and 
manipulating, as it were, his body of sin and death, he 
can do just nothing in the way of self-perfection ; and, 
if he could even do every thing, as regards self-trans- 
formation, there would be no religious character in the 
result, any more than if his works were done before the 
moon. Religious character is God in the soul, and 
without that all pretenses of religions virtue are, in fact, 
atheistic. Such is the disability of a fallen man, taken 


226 SELF-RESTORATION 


as acting on himself; and the condition of an angel, 
acting in that manner, is no better; for he could not 
begin to act thus, without being himself fallen, at the 
instant. But if the question be what a man has power’ 
to do, taken in the surroundings of divine truth and 
mercy, which in fact include the co-operating grace of 
the divine Spirit, the true answer is that he can do all 
things. He has, at every moment, a complete power as 
respects doing what God requires of him at that moment, 
and is responsible according to his power. And yet, 
when we say a complete power, we mean, not so much 
that he is going even then to do something himself, as 
that he is going to have something done within, by the 
quickening and transforming power of his divine Lord, 
in whom he trusts. His power is to set himself before 
power, open his nature to the rule of power, and so to 
live. Even as we may say that a tree has power to live 
and grow, not by acting on itself and willing to grow, 
but as it is ministered unto by its natural surroundings, 
the soil, the sun, the dew, the air. It has only to offer 
itself openly and receptively to these, and by their force 
to grow. : 

~ Where, then, it may be asked, is the significance of 
free will, which we have even shown to be a power 
supernatural? If the disordered soul can not restore 
itself, or by diligent self-culture regain the loss it has 
made by sin, wherein lies the advantage of such a power, 
und where the responsibility to a life of holy virtue? 
Our answer is, that by the freedom of the will we under- 
stand simply its freedom as a volitional function; but 
mere volitions, taken by themselves, involve no capacity 
to regenerate, or constitute, a character. Holy virtue 
is not an act, or compilation of acts taken merely as 
volitions, but it is a new state or status rather, a right 


IS IMPOSSIBLE avieil 


disposedness whence new action may flow. And no 

_mere volitional exercise can change the state or dis- 
posedness of the soul, without concurrent help and 
grace. We can will any thing, but the execution may 
not follow. To will may be present, but how to per- 
form, it may be difficult to find, — difficult, that is, when 
simply acting in and upon ourselves; never difficult, 
never possible to fail in doing, when acting before and 
toward a Divine Helper, trustfully appealed to. And 
this is the power of the will, as regards our moral 
recovery. It may so offer itself and the subordinate 
capacities to God, that God shall have the whole man 
open to his dominion, and be able to ingenerate in him 
a new, divine state, or principle of action ; while, taken 
as a governing, cultivating, and perfecting power in 
itself, it has no such capacity whatsoever. And this is 
the only rational and true verdict. Say what we may 
of the will as a strictly self-determining power, raise 
what distinctions we may as regards the kinds of ability, 
such as natural and moral, antecedent and subsequent, 
we have no ability at all, of any kind, to regenerate our 
own state, or restore our own disorders. Salvation is 
by faith, or there is none. 


There is then, we conclude, no hope of a restoration — 
of society, or of a religious upraising of man, except in 
a supernatural and divine operation. Progress under 
sin, by laws of natural development, is a fiction — there 
is no hope of progress, apart from the regenerative and 
quickening power of a grace that transcends mere nat- 
ural conditions and causes. As little room is there to 
expect that men will be able to heal their own spiritual 
maladies and cultivate themselves into heaven’s order, 
by a merely ethical regimen maintained in the plane of 


228 RESTORATION POSSIBLE, 


nature. The only remedy for the human state, under 
sin, is that which comes into nature, as the revelation 
of a divine force. 

Suppose now there might be found some great and 
profound thinker, who has never come under the im- 
press of Christianity, or even heard of such a thing as 
a plan of supernatural redemption ; a man of the high- 
est culture, least under the power of superstition; a 
free-thinker as regards the religion of his country and 
times; and suppose that he, by the mere force of his 
own thought, struggling with the great problem of 
humanity, society, and progress, should be found to rest 
his hope deliberately on some supernatural remedy, as 
the only sufficient remedy for the world ; giving forth 
a testimony that has been audited and accepted by the 
greatest and best minds of all subsequent ages; reveal- 
ing, as it were, a Christianity before the time, as far as 
the want of it and the fact of some such operative 
power are concerned ; how unlikely will it be that some 
new science of development, or some more rational 
gospel of self-culture, has just now discovered the es- 
sential weakness or childishness of a supernatural faith. 
Precisely such a witness we have in the great Plato, 
seconded by the coincident testimony of many others, 
only less conspicuous than he. 

Beginning at the base note of human depravity, he 
says, ‘‘I have heard from the wise men that we are now 
dead, and that the body is our sepulcher.”! Again he 
says, “ The prime evil is inborn in souls;” “it is im- 
planted in men to sin.”? Again, “ The nature of man- 
kind is greatly degenerated and depraved, all manner 
of disorders infest human nature, and men, being impo- 
tent, are torn in pieces by their lusts, as by so many 

1 Gorgias, fol. 493. 2Leg., 781. 


ONLY BY THE GRACE OF GOD 229 


wild horses.”! He also speaks of an “evil nature,” 
“an evil in nature,” ‘a disease in nature,” “a destruc- 
tion of harmony in the soul,’ and much more to the 
same effect. Then again, tracing the origin of this dis- 
eased state, he says, ‘That in times past, the divine 
nature flourished in men; but, at length, being mixed 
with mortal custom, it fell into ruin; hence an inunda- 
tion of evils in the race.”? Again, “ The cause of cor- 
ruption is from our parents, so that we never relinquish 
their evil way, or escape the blemish of their evil 
habit.” 8 

Inquiring now for the remedy which is able to restore 
and re-establish the virtue lost, he discusses at large the 
question, whether virtue can be taught, and deliberately 
concludes that it can be produced by no mere teaching. 
He says, “If, in this whole disputation, we have rightly 
conceived the case, virtue is acquired, neither by 
nature’s force, nor by any institutes of discipline or 
teaching, but it comes to those that have it, by a certain 
divine appointment [or inspiration] over and above the 
mind’s own force or exertion.” * He also adds that, if 
we could be dressed up into a show of virtue by teach- 
ing, it would be the same as “to be adorned with a 
shadow, whereas virtue is a thing real and solid,” — 
rooted, that is, in the heart’s inmost life. The same 
conviction is expressed in a different form when he 
says, “ That after the golden age, the universe, by rea- 
son of that confusion that came upon it, would have 
been quite dissolved, had not God again taken it upon 
him to sit at the helm and govern the world, and re- 
store its disordered and almost disjointed parts to their 
primeval order.”* And accordantly with such a con- 


1Politicus, 274. 2 Critias, 400. 8’ Timzus, 103. 
4#Meno., 89. 5 Politicus, 251. 


230 THE SAME IS HELD, 


viction, he recommends a faith in divine help and 
supernatural guidance, and says, “he who prayeth to 
God, and trusteth in his good favor, shall do well.” } 
Again, *“ God is the beginning and end of all being, and 
whoever follows his guidance shall be happy.” And 
that he means, by this, to commend a faith in super- 
natural aid, is evident when he says, in his Timeus, 
“‘that beatitude, or spiritual liberty, is only to have the 
demon,” that is, the good spirit, “dwelling in us,” 
alluding probably to the remarkable declaration of his 
teacher, Socrates, “that a certain demon, or good spirit, 
had followed him even from his childhood, with his 
good suggestion or influence, signifying what he should 
do.” ? He brings in Socrates also maintaining this re- 
markable dialogue with his pupil, Alcibiades: “ Dost 
thou know by what means thou mayest avoid the 
inordinate motions of thy mind?” He answers, 
“Yes.” Soc. “How?” Al. “If thou wilt, Socrates.” 
Soc. “Thou speakest not rightly.” Al. “How then 
must I speak?” Soc. “Say, if God will,” ete. 

Here then, we have a man rising up out of heathenism, 
one of the greatest of mankind, testifying his conviction 
of the disability and ruin of human nature, and his con- 
fidence in some supernatural aid, as the only hope of 
the world —all this instructed by his own conscious- 
ness, and by so many years of philosophic study, in the 
great problem of humanity and human progress. For 
no teacher, even of our modern time, is more intent on 
the possibility of some better ideal state of the world 
and society than he. In this problem, indeed, it may 
even be said that he wore out his life. 

Seneca speaks quite despairingly of our possible re- 

1Epinom., 980. 8 Theages, 128. 
2 Leg., 715. 4 Alcib., 135. 


EVEN BY THE WISEST HEATHENS 231 


covery by any means. He says, “ Our corrupt nature 
has drunk in such deep draughts of iniquity, which are 
so far incorporated in its very bowels, that you can not 
remove it, save by tearing them out.” And yet he 
conceives, in the faintest manner, some possibility of 
supernatural aid. “No man is able to clear himself, 
let some one give him a hand, let some one lead him 
out ” 1 — as if asking for some Christ unknown, to come 
and bring the soul forth from its thralldom. 

He also says, as if he were writing out another VIIth 
chapter of the Romans, “ What is it, Lucilius, that, 
when we set ourselves in one way, draws us another, and 
when we desire to avoid any course, drives us into it? 
What is it that so wrestles with our mind, allowing us 
never to settle any good resolution once for all?” ? 

And Ovid also joins in the same confession — “ If I 
could, I would be more sane. But some unknown force 
drags me against my will. Desire draws me one way, 
conviction another. I see the better and approve, the 
worse I follow.”?2 ‘O wretched man that I am, who 
shall deliver?” is the sigh that interprets and fitly con- 
cludes their confession. 

Passages in great number could be cited from other 
ancient writers, in which they express the same convic- 
tion; that man can never be raised out of his sin, by any 
mere natural force. But these are points of opinion. 
We prefer to add, as being more significant, some illus- 
trations also of the practical longing they had for the 
appearance of some divine helper, and the manifestation 
of God in some gracious revelation of his presence. In 
illustrations of this kind, we shall see exactly what 
would be our own condition, if these supernatural mani- 


1 Ep., 52. 2Ep., 52. 8 Metam. vii., 18. 


232 THEY ARE OPPRESSED 


festations, denied by so many in our times, were taken 
away, and we were really set back, as we require our- 
selves to be, in the proper darkness of nature. It was 
a continual source of misery to the most enlightened of 
the pagan scholars and philosophers that, whatever they 
seemed to discover, or to establish by the light of nat- 
ural reason, was yet never discovered, never established, 
but was still overhung by a cloud of uncertainty. 
Thus we hear Xenophanes closing off his work on 
Nature, in these words — “ No man has discovered any 
certainty, nor will discover it, concerning the gods, and 
what I say of the universe. For if he uttered what is 
even most perfect, still he does not know it, but con- 
jecture hangs over all.” 

Oppressed by this feeling of uncertainty, they were 
only goaded the more painfully in their search after the 
real meaning of life, and waited, with a longing only 
the more hungry, for some revelation of divine things, 
if haply it might sometime be given. Thus Plato, 
speaking in his Phedo of the soul, and its destiny, 
says — “It appears to me that, to know them clearly 
in the present life, is either impossible, or very difficult ; 
on the other hand, not to test what has been said of 
them in every possible way, not to investigate the whole 
matter, and exhaust upon it every effort, is the part of 
a very weak man. For we ought, in respect to these 
things, either to learn from others how they stand, or 
to discover them for ourselves; or, if both these are 
impossible, then, taking the best of human reasonings, 
that which appears the best supported, and embarking 
on that, as one who risks himself on a raft, so to sail 
through life — unless one could be carried more safely, 
or with less risk, on a secret conveyance, or some Divine 
Logos.” What a condition of hunger for knowledge! 


BY THE UNCERTAINTIES OF TRUTH 233 


—a great and mighty soul, prying at the gates of light, 
to force them open, catching the faintest gleams of truth 
or opinion, and committing his all tenderly to them as 
to a slender raft upon the sea, only venting, with a 
sigh, the mysterious hint of a Divine Logos, who will 
possibly come to him within, and be a surer light, a 
safer guide. And this dim hint of a better revelation 
is ventured more boldly in his Alcibiades, when he says 
— “We must wait patiently until some one, either a 
god or some inspired man, teach us our moral and reli- 
gious duties and, as Pallas in Homer did to Diomede, 
remove the darkness from our eyes.” How little in- 
credible was it to him, the highest philosophic intellect 
the world has ever seen, that some incarnate messenger 
of God, or teacher supernaturally sent, may sometime 
come to enlighten the world! What in fact does he 
tell us, but that he is waiting for Jesus the Christ! 

At a later period, or about the time of Christ, when 
the faith of the ancient religion or mythology had 
become more nearly extinct, the struggle of souls, shut 
up to the mere darkness of nature and reason, became 
more sad and painful. Strabo, for example, falling back 
on the religion of Moses, received from him a faith in 
one Supreme Essence, who he thought should be wor- 
shiped without images in sacred groves; and there, he 
said, “the devout should lay themselves down to sleep, 
and expect signs from God in dreams.”! Not daring 
to look for any waking experience of God supernatu- 
rally revealed in the soul, he must still indulge the hope 
that the Eternal will, at least, come to it in the land 
of sleep and dreams. Poor Pliny, confessing too the 
wretched hunger of his soul, saw no relief to it better 
than suicide. “It is difficult,” he writes, “ to say whether 

1Lib. XVL, Chap. 2. 


934 AND TESTIFY THEIR LONGING 


it might not be better for men to be wholly without re- 
ligion, than to have one of this kind [viz., that of his 
country, ] which is a reproach to its object. The vanity 
of man, and his insatiable longing after existence, have 
led him also to dream of a life after death. A being 
full of contradictions, he is the most wretched of crea- 
tures, since the other creatures have no wants tran- 
scending the bounds of their nature. Man is full of 
desires and wants that reach to infinity, and can never 
be satisfied. Among these so great evils, the best thing 
God has bestowed on man is the power to take his own 
life.”1 Scarcely less sad is the desperation of the pagan 
Cecilius, represented in the dialogue of Minutius Felix, 
as maintaining that, without any reasonable evidence 
for the old religion, they must yet cling to it as a 
tradition; for he felt that they must have some sem- 
blance of a religion, some opinion of a supernatural 
care and a converse of Deity with men. “How much 
better is it,” he said, “to receive just what our fathers 
have told us, to worship the gods they taught us to 
reverence, even before we could have any true knowl- 
edge of them, to allow ourselves no right of private 
judgment, but to believe our ancestors who, in the in- 
fancy of mankind, near the birth of the world, were 
even considered worthy of having the gods for their 
friends.” What a strait is this for an intelligent being 
to be in—holding fast, by his will, upon the belief of 
a supernatural approach of the gods, in times gone by, 
without any present evidence ! 

It is a very fine thing for many, saturated as they 
are with Christian truth, and all but oppressed with 
the evidences of a new creating grace and gospel, to 
invent speculative difficulties, and finally take it up as 

1 Hist. Nat., Lib. VIL 


FOR A SUPERNATURAL REVELATION 235 


wisdom or the better reason, to believe in nothing but 
mere nature, and her laws. But the recoil of the soul 
from such negations will come after, and it will be 
terrible quite beyond their conception. We see this in 
the facts just stated, and yet more affectingly in the 
history of Clement the Roman, and of his conversion. 
He tells how he was harassed from his childhood, by 
questions which paganism could not help him to an- 
swer ; such as relate to his being and immortality, the 
origin of the world and its continuance, when it began, 
when it will end, and whither his present life is to 
carry him. “Incessantly haunted,” he says, “by such 
thoughts as these, which came I knew not whence, I 
was sorely troubled, so that I grew pale and emaciated. 
.-. I resorted to the schools of the philosophers, 
hoping to find some certain foundation. I saw nothing 
but the piling up and tearing down of theories. Thus 
was I driven to and fro, by the different representa- 
tions, and forced to conclude that things appear, not as 
they are in themselves, but as they happen to be pre- 
sented on this or that side. I was made dizzier than 
ever, and from the bottom of my heart, sighed for 
deliverance.” 1 Then he tells how he resolved to visit 
Egypt, the land of mysteries and apparitions, there to 
hunt up some magician who could summon a spirit for 
him from the other world ; for he thought, if he could 
see a spirit, that would settle the question of immor- 
tality, and give him a fixed point of truth. But in this 
unhappy state, inquiring, distressed, agitated, he fell 
in with a Christian gospel, heard it preached, there 
discovered what his soul had been aching so long and 
bitterly to find, and there he found rest. 

These illustrations from history show us most effec- 


1 Neander’s Hist., Vol. I., pp. 32-33. 


236 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST 


tually how little of true science there is, after all, in 
those who boast the laws of progress, or a gospel of 
self-cultivation, as more rational and hopeful than a 
gospel of faith. After all, they may see that, when 
left to the proper darkness of nature, it is no such 
rational and luminous state as they thought, but a 
night of gloom, a longing vacancy, a hunger insupport- 
able. Nature has no promise for society, least of all, 
any remedy for sin. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE SUPERNATURAL COMPATIBLE WITH NATURE AND 
SUBJECT TO FIXED LAWS 


Ir, as we have shown, there is no hope for man, or 
human society, under sin, save in the supernatural 
interposition of God, we are led to inquire, in the next 
place, what rational objection there may be to such an 
interposition? And we find two objections alleged. 
First, that any such interference of supernatural agency 
is incompatible with the order of nature. Secondly, 
that the supernatural agency supposed, is itself dis- 
pensed without law, and contrary, in that view, to 
reason. Of these I will speak in their order. And — 

I. I undertake to show that the supernatural divine 
agency, required to provide an efficacious remedy for 
sin, is wholly compatible with nature; involving no 
breach of her laws, or disturbance of their systematic 
action. 

I have already shown that nature is not, in any 
proper and complete sense, the system of God, but is 
in fact a subordinate member only, of a higher and 
virtually supernatural system, to whose uses it is sub- 
ject. Itis, in fact,a Thing; while the real kingdom 
of God is a kingdom of Powers, himself the Regal 
Power. Both he and they are continually using the 
Thing, and pouring their activity into it, as the medial 
point of their relationship ; and this, in a way, we now 

237 


238 THE SUPERNATURAL 


propose to show, that is nowise incompatible with its 
laws ; for the very sufficient reason that, by these laws, 
it is originally submitted to their activity. Not even 
what we call the distemper and disorder of wrong sup- 
poses any overturning of those laws; it is only a result 
of mischief, produced by throwing in that which pro- 
vokes their penal consequences. In the same manner, 
it will be seen that not even miracles, wrought by 
a supernatural divine agency, necessarily imply any 
removal, or suspension of such laws; for nature is 
subjected, by her laws, both to God’s activity and to 
ours, to be thus acted on, and varied in her operation, 
by the new combinations or conjunctions of causes, we 
are able to produce. Accordingly every result pro- 
duced, in this manner, whether by God or by men, 


_ represents nature supernaturally acted on, not nature 
| overturned ; that is, it is natural in one view, in an- 


other supernatural; natural as coming to pass under 
and by the laws of nature ; supernatural as coming to 
pass by new conjunctions of causes, which are made by 
the action of wills upon nature. 

What an immense action upon nature are we our- 
selves seen to have, as a race, when we consider the 
multifarious wheels and engines we have put at work, 
the heavy burdens we carry round the globe in our 
ships, the structures we raise, the cultivation we prac- 
tice. We make the world, in fact, another world. All 
of which is referrible to a force supernatural, in the 
last degree. Nature, unapplied or uncombined by our 
wills, could do no such thing. Wills only have this 


power, and wills are supernatural. If now we have a 


power so immense over the world, as we see in all our 
works and wonders of contrivance, is it credible that 
God can have no way of access to nature, no power at 


COMPATIBLE WITH NATURE 239 


all over nature? Is he the only will excluded from a 
sovereignty over it ? 

To illustrate this point yet farther, we will suppose 
a company of youth or children, engaged in playing at 
ball. The ball is an inert spherical substance, that will 
lie on the ground forever, unless it is raised by some 
cause out of itself, and will never act, save as it is 
acted on. It has a certain tenacity of parts and an 
elastic body, but no power in itself to move. Never- 
theless we see it flying through the air in lively play, 
smitten, caught, thrown — the central object and instru- 
ment of what is called a game ; that is of a social strife 
between the players. It is, for the time, a medium of 
commerce, in the lively battle of its motions, between 
so many contesting agents. But the motions it has in 
the air, we observe, represent so many arms throwing 
it by its weight, or driving it by its elasticity. So far 
its play is natural only. Then, if we inquire what 
moves the arms, we discover that it is done by the 
sudden contraction of muscles, acting under purely 
mechanical principles, and this is natural. If now we 
push our inquiry still farther, asking why the muscles 
contracted thus and thus, we discover that this also 
happened, by reason of mandates sent down to them 
on the nervous cord, which, again, was equally natural. 
But if we go still farther and ask what originated or 
caused the wills to originate the mandates, the true 
answer is, that it was the wills themselves, acting by 
no causation, able to act or not; so that, if some one 
or more of the players is a truant from school, or from 
home, transgressing, in the play, a direct order of 
restriction, he will know that he is doing wrong and 
blame himself for the wrong he does, simply because 
it is an immediate, irresistible conviction of his mind, 


240 THE SUPERNATURAL 


that he is impelled to his disobedience by no cause 
whatever. Doubtless he has ends, reasons, motives, 
but these are no causes of his act; for he knows that 
he could and ought to have resisted them all. Here 
then we finally arrive at a power supernatural, moving 
all the hands and bats of the players. The ball is at 
one end of so many chains of causes, and the free wills 
of the players at the other. The ball would never 
have stirred but for the arms, nor these but for the 
contractions of the muscles, nor these contracted but 
for the mandates sent down to them, which mandates, 
in the last degree, are the peremptory acts of so many 
free wills, or powers, that act supernaturally, from no 
causation. Just here then rises the question, if the 
play is thus carried on by causes which, in the last 
degree, are supernatural, is there any overturning or 
disorder of nature implied in it? Manifestly not; and 
for the simple reason that the bats, and arms, and 
hands, and muscles, are by their very laws subordinated, 
as chains of causes, to the supernatural power that 
wields them. The play is natural, therefore, as being 
through and by those subordinated agents ; and super- 
natural, as being from that power. We have no thought 
of a miracle in the case, or of any implied overturning 
of nature which is shocking to our faith. On the con- 
trary, the event is so common, so remote from any 
thing extraordinary, that we are very likely to look 
upon it as a transaction, wholly in the world of natural 
cause and effect. 

We come now to the application. Nature is to God 
and his spiritual and free creatures, what the ball is to 
the players. In one view, we may regard the Almighty 
Ruler of the world as the sensorium and active brain 
of the world; having an immediate power of action 


COMPATIBLE WITH NATURE 241 


through every member and every line of causes in it; 
able, in that manner, to maintain a constant living 
agency in its events, without really infringing its order, 
or obstructing and suspending its laws in any instance. 
Nature is pliant thus to him, as the body of the players 
to them ; and as the natural order of their body is not 
violated by the mandates they put upon it, so there is 
full opportunity for God to do his wonders of power 
and redemption in the earth, without violating any 
condition of natural order and system whatever. His 
access to all the lines of causes in nature may be as 
truly normal as that which the soul has, at that secret 
point of the brain where it delivers its mandates to the 
body. 

We are speaking here, it will be observed, not of 
God’s possible activity, as being the activity of nature. 
That is a different conception. What we now say is, 
that, supposing all the forces and laws of nature to con- 
tinue forever, there is also room for the perpetual act- 
ing of God upon the lines of causes in nature, doing 
his will supernaturally in it, or upon it, just as we do, 
and yet in perfect compatibility with the laws and the 
settled order of nature. He may as well act himself 
into the world as we, and nature will as little be over- 
turned by his action as by ours. Nor will it create any 
difficulty that he acts like himself, and in ways propor- 
tionate to his infinite majesty. 

That nature is in fact submitted to his action, as to 
ours, in the manner supposed, is evident from the re- 
port of science itself. For when the geologists show 
that new races of animal and vegetable life have taken 
a beginning, at successive points in the history of the 
creation, that whole realms of living creatures dis- 
appear again and again, to be succeeded by others fresh 


242 THE SUPERNATURAL 


from the hand of God, what does it signify but that 
the atoms and elemental forces of nature are so related 
to God, that they do, by their own laws, submit them- 
selves to his will, flowing into new combinations, and 
composing thus new germs of life? These successive 
repopulations of the rocks were not produced by so 
many overturnings of nature — that is too extravagant 
for belief, and stands in no harmony with what we 
know of God. On the contrary, every element of 
force and every atom of matter concerned in these new 
births of life, was acting, we are to believe, in its mo- 
ment of new combination, precisely as, according to its 
inherent properties and laws, it ever had done and ever 
will do. It was only instigated by a divine force not 
in its natural laws; and in the quickening of that, 
yielding itself up, by these laws, to organize and live. 
Nor was the visitation of Mary, glorious and sacred as 
the mystery was, a transaction at all different in prin- 
ciple, or one that involved, in fact, any violation of 
nature not involved in the other just named. So also 
when we discover the world, or human race, groaning 
under the penal disorders and bondage of sin, the de- 
liverance of those disorders by a supernatural power 
involves no overturning of the causes at work, or the 
laws by which they work, but only that these causes 
are, by their laws, submitted to the will and super- 
natural action of God, so that he can arrange new con- 
junctions, and accomplish, in that manner, results of 
deliverance. Indeed, a physician does precisely the 
same thing in principle, when, appealing as he thinks 
to the laws of substances, he brings them into combina- 
tions that are from himself, and places them in connec- 
tions to exert a healing force. 

It will farther assist our conceptions and modify our 


COMPATIBLE WITH NATURE 243 


impressions of this subject, if we inquire briefly into 
the office and. probable use of what is called nature. 
That nature is not appointed as any final end of God, 
we have before shown. It is only ordained, as we then 
intimated, to be played upon by the powers ; that is, by 
God himself and all free agents under him. Instead 
of being the veritable system or universe of God, as in 
our sensuality, or scientific conceit, we make it, we may 
call it more truly the ball or medial substance occupied 
by so many players; that is, by the spiritual universe 
under God as the Lord of Hosts. There could be no 
commerce of so many players in the game referred to, 
without some medium or medial instrument; and the 
instrument needed to be a constant, invariable sub- 
stance, as regards shape, weight, size, elasticity, inertia, 
and all the natural properties pertaining to it. If the 
ball changed weight, color, density, shape, every mo- 
ment, no skill could be acquired or evinced in the use 
of it; there would be no real test in the game, and no 
social commerce of play in the parties using it. There- 
fore it needed to be, so far, a constant quantity. So, 
demonstrably, there needs to be, between us and God, 
and between us and one another, some constant quan- 
tity, so that we can act upon each other, trace the 
effects of our practice and that of others, learn the 
mind of God, the misery and baseness of wrong, 
the worth of principles, and the blessedness of virtue, 
from what we experience; attaining thus to such a de- 
gree of wisdom, that we can set our life on a footing 
of success and divine approbation. What we call 
nature is this constant quantity interposed between us 
and God, and between us and each other — the great 
ball, in using which, our life battle is played. Or, con- 
sidering the grand immensity of planetary worlds, 


244 NATURE IS ADJUSTED 


careering through the fields of light, all these, we may 
say, rolling eternally onward in their rounds of order, 
bearing their wondrous furniture with them, such as 
science discovers, and weaving their interminable lines 
of causes, are the ball of exercise, in which and by 
which God is training and teaching the spiritual hosts 
of his empire. They are set in a system of immutable 
order and constancy for this reason ; but with the de- 
sign, beforehand, that all the free beings or powers shall 
play their activity on them and into them, and that he, 
too, by the free insertion of his, may turn them about 
by his counsel, and so make himself and his counsel 
open to the commerce of his children. 

So far, therefore, from discovering any thing undig- 
nified or superstitious in the admission of a supernatu- 
ral agency and government of God in the world, it is, 
in fact, the only worthy and exalted conception. It no 
more humbles the world or deranges the scientific order 
of it to let God act upon it, than to let man do the same ; 
as we certainly know that he does, without any thought 
of overturning its laws. On the other hand, to imagine, 
in the way of dignifying the world, that God must let 
it alone and simply see it go, is only to confess that it 
was made for no such glorious intent as we have sup- 
posed. 

To serve this intent, two things manifestly are wanted, 
and one as truly as the other; viz., nature and the su- 
pernatural, an invariable, scientific order, and a pliant 
submission of that order to the sovereignty and uses of 
wills, human and divine, without any infringement of 
its constancy. For if nature were to be violated and 
tossed about by capricious overturnings of her laws, 
there would be an end of all confidence and exact intel- 
ligence. And if it could not be used, or set in new con- 


TO RECEIVE THE SUPERNATURAL 245 


junctions, by God and his children, it would be a wall, a 
catacomb, and nothing more. And yet this latter is the 
world of scientific naturalism, a world that might well 
enough answer for the housing of manikins, but not for 
the exercise of living men. It would seem to be enough 
to forever dissipate any such unbelieving tendencies, 
simply to have caught, for once, the difference between 
the constancy of causes separated from uses, and the 
constancy of causes limbered and subjected to the uses 
of eternal freedom and intelligence. That is the world 
of causation, this of religion ; that a dumb-bell exercise 
for arms that are dumb-bells themselves, this a living 
order, set in the contact and consecrated to the uses of 
spirit ; that a world as being a world, this a grand gym- 
nasium of powers whom God is training for society and 
commerce with himself. 

Furthermore, it is plain that, if there is no supernatural 
agency of God permissible or credible in the world, then 
there is practically no government over it. It makes no 
difference, touching the point here in question, whether 
we regard nature as being literally a machine, wound 
up to run by its own causes apart from God, or whether 
we regard the causes and laws as being themselves the 
immediate action of God, always present to them and 
in them. For if he is present thus, only as the soul of 
its causes or the will operating in its laws, then that 
presence, if restricted, as naturalism requires, to the 
mere run of nature, and allowed no liberty of help 
in the disorders of evil, is scarcely better than the 
presence of Ixion at his wheel. If we speak of God, 
the Almighty, he is a being mortgaged for eternity 
to the round of nature; a grim idol for science to 
worship, but no Father to weakness or Redeemer to 
faith. 


246 NO RESTRICTION THEREFORE 


Or if we imagine that God has so planned the world 
of nature that, running on by its own inherent laws and 
causes, it will always, by a pre-established harmony, 
bring just the events to pass that are wanted ; soothe 
the sorrows, comfort the repentances, hear the prayers, 
redress the wrongs, chastise the crimes of his subjects ; 
still it is with our faith practically as if it were living in 
a mill, and not as if it were concerned, hour by hour, 
with the living God. God is really not accessible. We 
have access only to the mill we are in, with joy to feel 
it running! There is no such reciprocity between us 
and God as to answer the wants of our hearts, or the 
necessities of our moral training. 

Besides, if it be maintained that nature is the proper 
universe of God, and that no conception is admissible 
of powers outside of nature acting upon it, to vary the 
action it would otherwise have by itself, then follows 
the very shocking consequence that, since the creation, 
God has had and can hereafter have no work of liberty 
todo. Nature is his monument, and not his garment. 
Not only are miracles out of the question, but counsel 
and action also. He is under a scientific embargo, 
neither hearing nor helping his children, nor indeed giy- 
ing any signs of recognition. And the reason is worse, 
if possible, and more chilling than the fact; viz., that 
if he should stir, he would move something that science 
requires to be let alone! A great many Christians are 
confused and chilled by a difficulty resembled to this, 
feeling, when they go to God in worship or prayer, that 
nothing can reasonably be expected of him, because 
reason allows him to do nothing. It is as if he were 
one of those spent meteors to which the Indians offer 
sacrifice — a hard, cold rock of iron, which they worship 
for the noise it made a long time ago when it fell from 


UPON GOD’S LIBERTY 247 


the sky, and not because it is likely ever to make even 
a noise again. 

Just here, the view we are advancing is seen to have 
an immense practical as well as speculative consequence. 
It finds how to concerve God in a state of as great ac- 
tivity now, as he was when he made the world — always 
active from eternity to eternity. Every work of his 
hand is pliant still to his counsel. He is doing some- 
thing, able to do all we want. In all events and changes 
he has a present concern. He turns about not the clouds 
only, but all the wheels of nature, by his ever-living 
power and government. He isan Agent, as much more 
real than nature as he is wider in his reach and more 
sovereign. He can produce variant results through 
invariable causes, and so can make the world of things 
keep company with the variant demands of want, weak- 
ness, wickedness, and merit ; of love, truth, justice, and 
holy supplication, in his children. It is no longer as if, 
at some given point in the solitude of his eternity, he 
waked up and created the worlds, since which time he 
has neither done nor can ever be expected to do any 
thing more, because it is the right now of the laws of 
nature to do every thing uninterrupted. Contrary to 
this, he is the Living God, and can as readily meet us 
and bend himself and his works to our condition or re- 
quest, as a man, without any infringement of his body, 
can bend it to his uses. Nature is seen to be subjected 
to his constant agency by its laws themselves, which 
laws he has never to suspend, but only to employ, hav- 
ing the great realm of nature flexible as a hand, to his 
will forever. Now he is no more fenced away from us 
by nature, no more closeted behind it, to sleep away his 
deaf and idle eternity ; but he is with us and about us, 
filling all things with his potent energy and fatherly 


248 THE SUPERNATURAL DISPENSED 


counsel. He maintains a relationship as real and prac- 
tical with us, as we have with each other. 


II. I undertake, in opposition to the objection which 
supposes that the supernatural agency of God is itself 
subject to no law, or system, to show that it is regu- 
lated and dispensed by immutable and fixed laws. As 
intelligent creatures, we can have no comfort under a 
condition ruled by no law or system, and conformed to 
no principles of intelligence. We instinctively demand 
that every thing in God’s plan shall stand in the strict 
unity of reason, even as the old astronomers strive to 
comprehend the heavenly bodies and their motions, in 
the figures of geometry and the fixed proportions of 
arithmetic. This high instinct of our nature, God, we 
may be sure, will never violate. 

1. Since’ God has inserted in our nature this instine- 
tive opinion of law, as necessary to the honor of his 
government and the comfort of our reason under it, we 
have, in the fact, a very certain proof that his govern- . 
ment will be such as to meet our respect, and satisfy 
the yearnings of our intelligence. 

2. The fact that nature is a realm, organized under 
fixed laws, is itself the best and most satisfactory evi- 
dence that such is the manner of God also in things 
supernatural. Who that simply looks on the heavenly 
worlds, for example, can suffer a doubt afterward that 
God will do every thing in terms of law and strict 
systematic unity ? 

3. Since God is the sovereign intelligence, the Per- 
fect Reason, he will himself have an affinity for law 
and systematic unity, as much stronger than we, as he 
is higher in order than we, and broader in the compre- 
hension of his understanding. Hence it is impossible 


BY FIXED LAWS 249 


to believe that, if any thing, even the smallest, he will 
deviate from rules of universal application — least of 
all in the highest order of his works, even such as he 
displays in the grace of our redemption. 

4. The moral and religious need we have of such a 
faith makes it indispensable. To let go of such a faith, 
or lose it, is to plunge at once into superstition. If any 
Christian, the most devout, believes in a miracle, or a 
providence that is done outside of all system and law, 
he is so far on the way to polytheism. The unity of 
God always perishes, when the unity of order and law 
is lost. And we may as well believe in one God, acting 
on or against another, as in the same God acting outside 
of all fixed laws and terms of immutable order. Indeed 
I suppose it was in just this way that polytheism began. 
The transition is easy and natural, from a superstitious 
belief in one God, who acts without system, to a belief 
in many who will much more naturally do the same. 

But the main difficulty, here, is not to establish a 
reasonable conviction that the supernatural works of 
God must be dispensed by fixed laws; it is to find how 
this may be, or be intelligently conceived. And here 
lies the main stress of our present inquiry. 

To open the way then to a just and clear conception 
of the great fact stated, it will be necessary to enter 
into some important distinctions concerning law, or 
what is properly meant by the word law. 

The word is used with many varieties of meaning, 
but always, and in all its varieties, having one element 
that is constant, viz., the opinion had of its uniformity ; 
as that, in exactly the same circumstances, it will al- 
ways and forever do, bring to pass, direct, or command 
' precisely the same thing. Without this no law is ever 
regarded as a law. 


250 THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS 


Observing this fundamental fact, we notice the dis- 
tinction next of natural and moral law. Natural law 
is the law by which any kind of being or thing is made 
to act invariably, thus or thus, in virtue of terms in- 
herent in itself; as when any body of matter gravitates 
by reason of its matter, and according to the quantity 
of its matter. 

Moral law pertains never to a thing, or to any sub- 
stance in the chain of cause and effect, but only to a 
free intelligence, or self-active power. Its rule is 
authority, not force. It commands, but does not actu- 
ate or determine. It speaks to assent or choice, 
inviting action, but operating nothing apart from 
choice. It imposes obligation, leaving the subject to 
obey or not, clear of any enforcement, save that of 
conviction beforehand, and penalty afterward. 

It will be seen at once that God’s supernatural works 
in Christ and the Spirit are not reducible under either 
of these two kinds of law, the natural or the moral. 
To a certain extent God’s nature will be a law to his 
action, even as ours is a necessary law to us. Thus, if 
we are intelligent, our intelligent nature will manifest 
effects of intelligence. If we form necessary ideas of 
figure, space, time, truth, right, justice, there will be 
something in our action that reveals these ideas. In 
like manner, if we are free agents, it is made impossible 
for us, by a fixed law of nature, to act as mere things, 
under the law of cause and effect. So, if God is infinite 
in his nature, then it is a fixed law of his nature that 
he shall indicate infinity in his action, and if he has 
geometric ideas, that his works shall, by a necessary 
consequence, have some fixed relation to the laws of 
geometry; such as we discover in their spheres and 
orbits, and projectile curves, and in the subtle triangu. 


AND ORDERS OF LAWS 251 


lations of light. Thus it is rightly affirmed by the 
great Hooker, that “the being of God is a kind of law 
to his working.” ! And so far does he carry this opin- 
ion as to hint the probable necessity that God, being 
both one and three, an essential unity and a threefold 
personality, there will, of course, be something in his 
works correspondent with his nature. 

So again if we speak of the law moral, that is a law 
as completely sovereign over God as it is over us. It 
is the eternal, necessary law of right, or of love; a law 
that he acknowledges with a ready and full assent for- 
ever; that which determines the immutable order, and 
purity, and glory of his character. And then, of course, 
the law accepted in his own character, will be the law 
published to his subjects to be the rule of theirs. Moral 
law, then, by the free consent of God, shapes the divine 
character, and so the character and ends of his govern- 
ment. 

But though natural law and moral law have much to 
do, as here discovered, in determining and molding all 
the conduct of God, we do not immediately conceive 
what is meant by the fact, that the supernatural works 
of God are dispensed by fixed laws, till we bring into 
view a third kind of law, viz., the law of one’s end, or 
the law which one’s reason imposes in the way of attain- 
ing his end. Moral law, we have said, shapes the char- 
acter of God, and that determines his end. Since he is 
a morally perfect being in his character, moral perfec- 
tion or holiness will be the last end of his being, that 
for which he creates and rules; for, if he were to value 
holiness only as the means of some other end, such as 
happiness, then he would ever disrespect holiness, rat- 
ing it only as a convenience; which is not the charac- 


1 Ecclesiastical Polity, Vol. I., p. 72. 


252 THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS 


ter of a holy being, but only an imposture in the name 
of such a character. Regarding holiness then as God’s 
last end, his world-plan will be gathered round the end 
proposed, to fulfill it, and all his counsels will crystal- 
lize into order and system, subject to that end. For 
this nature will exist, in all her vast machinery of 
causes and laws; to this all the miracles and super- 
natural works of redemption will bring their contribu- 
tions. Having this for his end, and the supernatural as 
means to his end, the divine reason will of course order 
all under fixed laws of reason, which laws will be so 
exact and universal as to make a perfect system. 

How this may result, we can see from a simple refer- 
ence to ourselves. Thus, if a man undertakes to be 
honest, having that for an end, then it will be seen that 
his end so far becomes a law to all his actions; that is, 
a law self-imposed, one which his reason prescribes, and 
which, in accepting his end, he freely accepts. So, ifa 
man’s end is to be rich, we shall see that his end is a 
law to his whole life-plan, or at least so far a law that 
it fails only where his reason or judgment falls short 
of a perfect perception. Or we may take a case more 
exact and palpable, the case of a player at the game of 
chess. The end he proposes is to win the game, and 
that end, subordinating his reason or skill, will become 
a law to every move he makes on the diagram, except 
where his skill is at fault, or his understanding short 
of comprehension. If now we suppose him to be gifted 
with a perfect skill or an all-perceiving reason, it will 
result that every move made will be determined with 
such exactness and uniformity, that, if he were to play 
the game over a million of times, he would never, in 
a single case, move differently, in exactly the same cir- 
cumstances. 


AND ORDERS OF LAWS 253 


Here then is what we mean by affirming that all God’s 
supernatural acts, providences, and works, supernatural 
though they be, will yet be dispensed, in all cases, 
by immutable, universal, and fixed laws. It will be so 
because his end never varies and his reason is perfect. 
Therefore his world-plan, though comprehending the 
supernatural, will be an exact and perfect system of 
order, centered in the eternal unity of reason about his 
last end. There will be nothing desultory in it, 
nothing irregular, nothing so particular as to happen 
apart from rule and universal counsel. The order of 
the heavens, and the angles of the light will not be 
more perfect, because the reason of the supernatural is 
equally precise and clear. The same work will always 
be done, in the same circumstances, without a sem- 
blance of variation. Even as the dial, under the laws 
of nature, will make the same shadow, at the same 
hour, for an eternal succession of days, so the good gift 
and perfect from above will come down from the Father 
of lights, punctual and true in its order, as from one 
whose counsel is perfect, and with whom is no variable- 
ness, neither shadow of turning. Order, everlasting 
order, reigns where least we look for it, and where the 
unthinking and crude mind of superstition would deem 
it even a merit, that God had broken loose from his 
eternity of law, to bless the world at will. 

But how is it conceivable, some one may ask, that 
such works as are comprehended in the range of human 
redemption should take place, systematically, under 
fixed Jaws? To this, we answer that it is not necessary 
to such a conviction that we should be able to conceive 
how these operate, or what they are. All we need is to 
find the possible and probable fact ; which having found, 
we can as little doubt, or dismiss the conviction of, 


254 GOD’S LAWS, IN THE SUPERNATURAL 


some presiding law, as we can the faith of universal 
laws in nature, where we do not know the laws, or can 
not discover the secret of their action. For example, 
we know, in general, what is the law of miracles; viz., 
that they are wroughtas attestations of a divine mission 
in those by whom they are wrought ; but their partic- 
ular occasions, times, and properties, why wrought by 
this and not by another, why at one time, or in one age, 
and not in succeeding ages, we may not be able to dis- 
cover. The law is beyond our investigation, but that 
there is a law, and that exactly the same miracles will 
be wrought, if wrought at all, in exactly the same 
conditions, or spiritual connections, even to eternity, 
we have no more room to doubt, than we have to 
question God’s intelligence. For, if God’s end is the 
same, he can never deviate or omit.to do exactly the 
same things, in exactly the same circumstances, with- 
out some defect of intelligence. Either now, or before, 
he must confess to a mistake. If he is perfect in wis- 
dom now, he was not then; if then, he is not now. 
But when we say “exactly the same circumstances,” it 
is important for us to notice the extent of the qualifica- 
tion’; for this will bring into view a great principle of 
distinction between the natural and the supernatural, 
apart from which the extraordinary and apparently 
desultory manifestations of the latter can not be under- 
stood. Nature isa machine, compounded of wheels and 
moved by steady powers. Hence it goes in rounds or 
cycles, returning again and again into itself, producing, 
thus, seasons, months, and years; repeating its dews, and 
showers, and storms, and varied temperatures ; in the 
same circumstances, or times, doing much the same 
things. But it is not so in the affairs of a mind, a 
society, or an age. There the motion is never in circles, 


ARE SHAPED BY HIS ENDS 255 


but onward, eternally onward. Nothing is ever repeated. 
No mind or spirit can reproduce a yesterday. No age, 
the age or even year that is past. The combinations 
of circumstances may have a certain analogy, but they 
are never the same, or even nearly so. If they are near 
enough to require a repetition, by the Saviour, of his 
miracle of the loaves, they will yet be so far different as 
to require a difference in the miracle. And where the 
outward conditions appear to be exactly the same, the 
inward states and spiritual connections may be so 
various as to take away all resemblance ; requiring 
Paul to raise a Publius out of his fever at Malta, and 
leave a Trophimus sick at Miletum. We have no argu- 
ment against uniformity and law in such diversities ; 
for, in reality, there is no recurrence of circumstances 
and conditions such as, at first view, might be supposed. 
So, if miracles appear in one age and not in another, it 
is because the world is moving on in aright line, repro- 
ducing no conditions and circumstances of the past, 
but, by conditions always new, is demanding a treat- 
ment correspondently new. Hence, while the course 
of nature is a round of repetitions, the course of the 
supernatural repeats nothing, and for that reason takes 
an aspect of variety that appears even to exclude the 
fact of law. But it is so only in appearance. God’s 
perfect wisdom still requires the same things to be 
done in the same circumstances ; and, when not the 
same, as nearly the same as the circumstances are nearly 
resembled. Every thing transpires in the uniformity 
of law. 

Thus we may assert as confidently, as if it occurred 
a hundred times a day, that a supernatural event, never 
known to occur but once, takes place under an immu- 
table and really universal law; such, for example, as 


256 THEY OPERATE AS LAWS, 


the great world-astounding miracle of the incarnation. 
In exactly the same conditions, if they were to occur a 
million of times in the universe, (which may or may 
not be a violent supposition,) precisely the same mir-. 
acle also would recur, and that with as great certainty 
as the natural law of gravity will cause a stone to fall, 
when for the millionth time its support is taken away. 
Living here upon this ant-hill, which we call the world, 
and seeing only the yard of space and the day of time » 
our field occupies, we are likely to judge that an event 
which never occurred but once since the world began, 
must be an event apart from all order and system; 
even as a savage, but a little more childish than we, 
might imagine that some new deity is breaking into 
the world, when he sees the air-stone fall, because he 
never saw the like before. Indeed, we have only to 
look into the appearings of the Jehovah angel, previous 
to the incarnate appearing of the Word, noting all the 
approaches and gradual preparations of the event, to 
see how certainly God has a way and a law for it, and 
will not bring it to pass till the law decrees it and the 
fullness of time is come. Could we look into the his- 
tory, too, of the innumerable other worlds God has 
comprehended in his reign, what a lesson might we 
thence derive from events counterpart to this of the 
incarnation, varied only to meet the varied conditions 
of their want, character, and destiny. Though we 
may not be able, creatures of a day, to unfold the law 
of this grand miracle, and reduce it to a formula of 
science, how little reason have we, in our inability, to 
question the fact of such a law. 

Besides, it is a fact that the laws of a great many of 
God’s supernatural works are made known, or discoy- 
ered to us. Thus God dispenses the Holy Spirit by 


WITH ETERNAL UNIFORMITY 257 


fixed laws. Prayer, also, is heard by laws as definite 
as the laws of equilibrium in forces. And what is 
called the doctrine of the Spirit and the doctrine of 
prayer, as given in the scriptures, is, in fact, nothing 
more nor less than the unfolding to us, if we could so 
regard it, of the laws of the Spirit and the laws of 
prayer, as pertaining to the supernatural kingdom of 
God. Indeed, there is wanting now, for the more 
intelligent guidance of Christian disciples, to consoli- 
date their faith and save them from the extravagances 
of fanaticism, a practical treatise on the laws of prayer, 
of spiritual gifts, and of the dispensation of the Holy 
Spirit generally. These two great powers, the hear- 
ing of prayer and the dispensing of the Spirit, are like 
the waterfalls and winds of nature, to which we set 
our wheels and lift our sails, and so, by their known 
laws, take advantage of their efficacy. A crystal, or 
gem, that is being distilled and shaped in the secret 
depths of the world, is net shaped by laws as well 
understood as the law of the Spirit of life, when it 
molds the secret order and beauty of a soul. 

Our conclusion therefore is, that all God’s works, 
even such as are most distinctly supernatural, are 
determined by fixed laws. This is true of all super- 
natural events, with the single exception of the bad 
and wicked actions of men. And these are out of all 
terms of law, not because they are supernatural, but 
only because they are bad. Indeed, it is a somewhat 
singular and even curious fact, that while so great 
jealousy is felt in our time, of miracles and all immedi- 
ate spiritual operations of God, as being so many viola- 
tions of order and fixed law in the universe, the only 
known events in the world, of which that is really true, 
are the bad actions of bad men, or of bad spirits gen- 


258 THEY ARE OFTEN AS WELL KNOWN 


erally. These are not subject to any fixed laws; they 
consent to no law. They are determined, neither by 
the laws of causality, nor by the laws of a good end; 
which are laws of reason, truth, and beneficence. They 
have no agreement with the world, or with God, or 
even with the constituent well-being of the doers 
themselves. All that can be apprehended of miracles 
is true of them and evenmore. Their damning miracle 
is every where, and the confusion they make is real. 
If those persons who are so ready to apprehend some 
destruction, or implied destruction of law in the faith 
of miracles, would turn their thoughts upon these real 
disorders, and conceive them as the only known facts 
in our world that have no subjection to law, they would 
have a good point of beginning for the cure of their 
skepticism generally. 


It can not be necessary to pursue this topic farther. 
But it may be well to notice, before we drop the sub- 
ject, one or two false impressions very commonly enter- 
tained by the natural philosophers and poets of nature, 
whose skepticism is oftener grounded in such impres- 
sions than in formal arguments. They are greatly 
impressed by the immutable reign of order and law in 
nature, deeming it the highest point of sublimity, in 
all the known manifestations of God. Not seldom 
indeed is this point magnified by them, in terms of 
admiration, that reflect a certain contempt on the 
Christian ideas of God; as if it were possible only to 
an overeasy credulity, to imagine that God will de- 
scend from his high position of law, to do such things 
as the preaching and praying disciples of Christianity 
except of him. Gazing into the sky, and beholding 
the eternal, changeless roll of the worlds, every orb in 


AS THE LAWS OF NATURE 259 


the track, where the astrologers of Babylon and Egypt 
saw it long ages ago, never to vary or falter in the longer 
ages to come — image, how sublime, they exclaim, of 
the divine greatness! Greater and sublimer still, that 
the same undeviating rule of law is equally conspicuous 
in the smallest things; that in every salt and pebble 
there is a little astronomy of atoms whose laws are as old 
as the stars, and whose constancy is a reflection of theirs! 
No, the wonder of God’s way is not here, but it is that 
he can make constancy flexible to so many myriads of 
uses, and the uses themselves—all but the abuses —a 
system of order and law, as complete and perfect as 
that of the stars. Constancy, as a mere post, or posi- 
tion, has no dignity. The true dignity and miracle of 
order is constancy made flexible to use and expression. 
Sir Charles Bell had no such thought as that he could 
magnify the beauty of God’s way in the hand, by simply 
showing the curious articulations by which it is mechan- 
ically strengthened in its gripe; the chief wonder, the 
real miracle of beauty in the instrument, as he well 
understood, lies in its flexibility, its ready submission 
to so many and such endless varied uses. Let us not 
be taken by the mere stability of nature, because it 
compliments our vanity by the easy understanding it 
permits. Magnitudes, weights, distances, regularities, 
are not the highest symbols of God’s creative dignity. 
The glory, the true sublimity of God’s architectural 
wisdom is that, while his work stands fast in immutable 
order, it bends so gracefully to the humblest things, 
without damage or fracture, pliant to all free action, 
both his and ours; receiving the common play of our 
liberty, and becoming always a fluent medium of recip- 
rocal action between us; to him a hand showing his 
handiwork, or even a tongue which day unto day 


260 GOD’S HIGHEST WORK 


uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth forth 
knowledge of him; to us the ground of our works, 
the instrument of our choices, and yet, in the order, all, 
of a perfect counsel and of laws as immutable as his 
throne. In this rests the doctrine of faith, the doctrine 
that justifies prayer, enables the disciple to believe that 
God can notice him, and move among causes to help 
him; raising him: thus: into a state of ennobled con- 
sciousness, how superior to the low mechanical skepti- 
cism which thinks itself dignified in the discovery that 
God, incrusted in the stiffness of his scientific order, 
has no longer any power to bend himself to man. 

The other point alluded to has reference to the com- 
parative estimate of nature and the supernatural. 
Unexercised in the great world of Christian thought, 
uninitiated by years of holy experience in its deep mys- 
teries, the natural philosopher and poet very commonly 
look upon the supernatural, or what is the same, Chris- 
tianity, as comprised of a few stray facts, or ghostly 
wonders, much less credible than they might be, and 
turn away, with a kind of pity, from a field so narrow, 
to what they call a broader and more satisfactory 
teaching ; that of the great school of nature. Here is 
variety, they say, beauty, magnificence, greatness, and a 
sound, consistent order, worthy of God. This, they 
imagine, is the true revelation. 

How little do such minds conceive what the world 
of supernatural fact comprises. Go to nature for the 
great and quickening thoughts, the wonders and broad 
truths. Call nature the grand revelation! Is it more 
to go to nature and know it, than to know God? Are 
there deeper depths in nature, higher sublimities, 
thoughts more captivating and glorious? In the min- 
eral and vegetable shapes are there finer themes than 


IS NOT THE WORLD OF NATURE, 261 


in the life of Jesus? In the storms and gorgeous pil- 
ings of the clouds, are there manifestations of greatness 
and beauty more impressive than in the tragic scen- 
eries of the cross? Nature is the realm of things, the 
supernatural is the realm of powers. There the spin- 
ning worlds return into their circles and keep return- 
ing. Here the grand life-empire of mind, society, 
truth, liberty, and holy government spreads itself in 
the view, unfolding always in changes vast, various, 
and divinely beneficent. There we have a Georgic, or 
a hymn of the seasons; here an epic that sings a lost 
Paradise. There God made the wheels of his chariot 
and set them rolling. Here he rides forth in it, leading 
his host after him ; vast in counsel, wonderful in work- 
ing ; preparing and marshaling all for a victory in good 
and blessing ; fashioning in beauty, composing in spir- 
itual order, and so gathering in the immense popula- 
tions of the worlds, to be one realm — angels, archangels, 
seraphim, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, 
and saints of mankind —all to find, in his works of 
guidance and new-creating grace, a volume of wisdom, 
which it will be the riches of their eternity to study. 
Thus we conceive, alas! too feebly, the true scale of 
dignity in God’s two realms. In one the order is su- 
perficial and palpable. In the other it is deep as eternity, 
mysterious and vast as the counsel that comprehends 
eternity, in its development. Still it is counsel, it is 
order, it is truth and reason. Even as the Revelation 
of John contrives, in so many ways, to intimate, by the 
using of exact numbers for those which are not; in the 
seven angels, and seven trumpets, and seven vials; in 
the four beasts, and four and twenty elders; in the 
hundred, forty, and four thousand of them that are 
sealed ; in the city, the new Jerusalem, that is four- 


= 
% - 


262 HIGHEST SUBJECTS NOT THOSE OF SCIENCE 


square, having its height, length, and breadth equal ; 
with twelve gates, tended by twelve angels, resting on 
twelve foundations, that are twelve manner of precious 
stones —by such images, and under such exact nota- 
tions of arithmétic, does this man of vision put us on 
conceiving, as we best can, the glorious and exact society 
God is recongebting out of the fallen powers. We 
shall see it to*Be, all in law; settled in such terms of 
order, that all counsel, act, and joy, both his and ours, 
will be in terms of everlasting truth and reason, a realm 
as much more wonderful than nature, as liberties of 
mind are more difficult to master than material 
quantities. 


~ 


CHAPTER X 


THE CHARACTER OF JESUS FORBIDS HIS POSSIBLE 
CLASSIFICATION WITH MEN 


THE need of a supernatural, divine ministration, to 
restore the disorders of sin, is now shown; also that 
such a ministration is compatible with the order of na- 
ture, and, being in that view a rational possibility, that 
it may well be assumed as a probable expectation. In 
this manner we are brought directly up to confront 
the main question—Is the exigency met by the fact? 
is the supernatural divine ministration actually set up, 
and shown to be by adequate evidence ? 

Here we raise a question, for the first time, that puts 
the Christian scriptures in issue; for it is the grand 
peculiarity of these sacred writings, that they deal in 
supernatural events and transactions, and show the fact 
of a celestial institution finally erected on earth, in the 
person of Jesus Christ, which is called the kingdom of 
God or of heaven, and is in fact a perpetual, supernat- 
ural dispensatory of healing and salvation for the race. 
Christianity is, in this view, no mere scheme of doctrine, 
or of ethical practice, but is instead a kind of miracle, 
a power out of nature and above, descending into it ; 
a historically supernatural movement on the world, 
that is visibly entered into it, and organized to be an 
institution in the person of Jesus Christ. He therefore 
is the central figure and power, and with him the entire 
fabric either stands or falls. 

263 


264 THE GOSPEL HISTORY, 


To this central figure, then, we now turn ourselves 
and, as no proof beside the light is necessary to show 
that the sun shines, so we shall find that Jesus proves 
himself by his own self-evidence. The simple inspec- 
tion of his life and character will suffice to show that 
he can not be classified with mankind, (man though he 
be,) any more than what,we call his miracles can be 
classified with mere natural events. The simple demon- 
strations of his life and spirit are the sufficient attesta- 
tion of his own profession, when he says —“ I am from 
above” — “I came down from heaven.” 

Let us not be misunderstood. We do not assume 
the truth of the narrative by which the manner and 
facts of the life of Jesus are reported to us; for this, 
by the supposition, is the matter in question. We only 
assume the representations themselves, as being just 
what they are, and discover their necessary truth in the 
transcendent, wondrously self-evident picture of divine 
excellence and beauty presented in them. We take up 
the account of Christ, in the New Testament, just as 
we would any other ancient writing, or as if it were a 
manuscript just brought to light in some ancient library. 
We open the book, and discover in it four distinet biog- 
raphies of a certain remarkable character, called Jesus 
Christ. He is miraculously born of Mary, a virgin of 
Galilee, and declares, himself, without scruple, that he 
came out from God. Finding the supposed history 
made up, in great part, of his mighty acts, and not be- 
ing disposed to believe in miracles and marvels, we 
should soon dismiss the book as a tissue of absurdities 
too extravagant for belief, were we not struck with the 
sense of something very peculiar in the character of 
this remarkable person. Having our attention arrested 
thus by the impression made on our respect, we are put 


} 


| 


HOW USED 265 


on inquiry, and the more we study it the more wonder- 
ful, as a character, it appears. And before we have 
done, it becomes, in fact, the chief wonder of the story ; 
lifting all the other wonders into order and intelligent 
proportion round it, and making one compact and glo- 
rious wonder of the whole picture —a picture shining 
in its own clear sunlight upon us, as the truest of all 
truths — Jesus, the Divine Word, coming out from God, 
to be incarnate with us, and be the vehicle of God and 
salvation to the race. 

On the single question, therefore, of the more than 
human character of Jesus, we propose, in perfect confi- 
dence, to rest a principal argument for Christianity as 
a supernatural institution ; for, if there be in Jesus a 
character which is not human, then has something 
broken into the world that is not of it, and the spell of 
unbelief is broken. 

Not that Christianity might not be a supernatural insti- 
tution, if Jesus were only a man; for many prophets and 
holy men, as we believe, have brought forth to the world 


{ communications that are not from themselves, but were 


received by inspirations from God. There are several 
grades, too, of the supernatural, as already intimated ; 
the supernatural human, the supernatural prophetic, the 
, Supernatural demonic and angelic, the supernatural di- 
vine. Christ, we shall see, is the supernatural mani- 
i fested in the highest grade or order; viz., the divine. 


We observe, then, as a first peculiarity at the root of 
his character, that he begins life with a perfect youth. 
His childhood is an unspotted, and, withal, a kind of 
celestial flower. The notion of a superhuman or celes- 
tial childhood, the most difficult of all things to be 
conceived, is yet successfully drawn by a few simple 


266 THE LIFE OF JESUS BEGINS 


touches. He is announced beforehand as “that Holy 
Thing”; a beautiful and powerful stroke to raise our 
expectation to the level of a nature so mysterious. In 
his childhood, every body loves him. Using words of 
external description, he is shown growing up in favor 
with God and man, a child so lovely and beautiful that 
heaven and earth appear to smile upon him together. 
So, when it is added that the child grew and waxed 
strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and, more than all, 
that the grace or beautifying power of God was upon 
him, we look, as on the unfolding of a sacred flower, 
and seem to scent a fragrance wafted on us from other 
worlds. Then, at the age of twelve, he is found among 
the great learned men of the day, the doctors of the 
temple, hearing what they say and asking them ques- 
tions. And this, without any word that indicates for- 
wardness or pertness in the child’s manner, such as 
some Christian Rabbi, or silly and credulous devotee, 
would certainly have added. The doctors are not 
offended, as by a child too forward or wanting in mod- 
esty, they are only amazed that such a degree of under- 
standing can dwell in one so young and simple. His 
mother finds him there among them, and begins to ex- 
‘postulate with him. His reply is very strange; it must, 
she is sure, have some deep meaning that corresponds 
with his mysterious birth, and the sense he has ever 
given her of a something strangely peculiar in his ways ; 
and she goes home keeping his saying in her heart, and 
guessing vainly what his thought may be. Mysterious, 
holy secret, which this mother hides in her bosom, that 
her holy thing, her child whom she has watched, during 
the twelye years of his celestial childhood, now begins 
to speak of being “about his Father’s business,” in 
words of dark enigma, which she can not fathom. 


WITH A PERFECT CHILDHOOD 267 


Now we do not say, observe, that there is one word 
of truth in these touches of narration. We only say 
that, whether they be fact or fiction, here is given the 
sketch of a perfect and sacred childhood —not of a 
simple, lovely, ingenuous, and properly human child- 
hood, such as the poets love to sketch — but of a sacred 
and celestial childhood. In this respect, the early char- 
acter of Jesus is a picture that stands by itself. In no 
other case, that we remember, has it ever entered the 
mind of a biographer, in drawing a character, to repre- 
sent it as beginning with a spotless childhood. The 
childhood of the great human characters, if given at all, 
is commonly represented, according to the uniform 
truth, as being more or less contrary to the manner of 
their mature age; and never as being strictly one with 
it, except in those cases of inferior eminence where the 
kind of distinction attained to is that of some mere 
prodigy, and not a character of greatness in action, or 
of moral excellence. In all the higher ranges of char- 
acter, the excellence portrayed is never the simple un- 
folding of a harmonious and perfect beauty contained 
in the germ of childhood, but it is a character formed 
by a process of rectification, in which many follies are 
mended and distempers removed; in which confidence 
is checked by defeat, passion moderated by reason, 
smartness sobered by experience. Commonly a certain 
pleasure is taken in showing how the many wayward 
sallies of the boy are, at length, reduced by discipline 
to the character of wisdom, justice, and public heroism 
so much admired. 

Besides, if any writer, of almost any age, will under-: 
take to describe, not merely a spotless, but a superhuman 
or celestial childhood, not having the reality before him, 
he must be somewhat more than human himself, if he 


268 HIS PERFECT CHILDHOOD 


does not pile together a mass of clumsy exaggerations, 
and draw and overdraw, till neither heaven nor earth 
can find any verisimilitude in the picture. 

Neither let us omit to notice what ideas the Rabbis 
and learned doctors of this age were able, in fact, to 
furnish, when setting forth a remarkable childhood. 
Thus Josephus, drawing on the teachings of the Rabbis, 
tells how the infant Moses, when the king of Egypt 
took him out of his daughter’s arms, and playfully put 
the diadem on his head, threw it pettishly down and 
stamped on it. And when Moses was three years old, 
he tells us that the child had grown so tall, and exhibited 
such a wonderful beauty of countenance, that people 
were obliged, as it were, to stop and look at him as he 
was carried along the road, and were held fast by the 
wonder, gazing till he was out of sight. See, too, what 
work is made of the childhood of Jesus himself in the 
Apocryphal gospels. These are written by men of so 
nearly the same era, that we may discover, in their em- 
bellishments, what kind of a childhood it was in the 
mere invention of the time to make out. While the 
' gospels explicitly say that Jesus wrought no miracles 
till his public ministry began, and that he made his 
beginning in the miracle of Cana, these are ambitious 
to make him a great prodigy in‘ his childhood. They 
tell how, on one occasion, he pursued, in his anger, the 
other children, who refused to play with him, and 
turned them into kids; how, on another, when a child 
accidentally ran against him, he was angry, and killed 
him by his mere word; how, on another, Jesus had a 
dispute with his teacher over the alphabet, and when 
the teacher struck him, how he crushed him, withered 
his arm, and threw him down dead. Finally, Joseph 
tells Mary that they must keep him within doors; for 


GENUINELY DESCRIBED 269 


every body perishes against whom he is excited. His 
mother sends him to the well for water, and, having 
broken his pitcher, he brings the water in his cloak. 
He goes into a dyer’s shop, when the dyer is out, and 
throws all the cloths he finds into a vat of one color, 
but, when they are taken out, behold, they are all dyed 
of the precise color that was ordered. He commands a 
palm-tree to stoop down and let him pluck the fruit, 
and it obeys. When he is carried down into Egypt, 
all the idols fall down wherever he passes, and the lions 
and leopards gather round him in a harmless company. 
This the Gospel of the Infancy gives as a picture of 
the wonderful childhood of Jesus. How unlike that 
holy flower of paradise, in the true gospels, which a few 
simple touches make to bloom in beautiful self-evidence 
before us ! 

Passing now to the character of Jesus in his maturity, 
we discover, at once, that there is an element in it which 
distinguishes it from all human characters, viz., inno- 
cence. By this we mean, not that he is actually sin- 
less; that will be denied, and therefore must not here 
be assumed. We mean that, viewed externally, he isa 
perfectly harmless being, actuated by no destructive 
passions, gentle to inferiors, doing ill or injury to none. 
The figure of a Lamb, which never was, or could be, 
applied to any of the great human characters, without 
an implication of weakness fatal to all respect, is yet, 
with no such effect, applied to him. We associate 
weakness with innocence, and the association is so 
powerful, that no human writer would undertake to 
sketch a great character on the basis of innocence, or 
would even think it possible. We predicate innocence 
of infancy, but to be a perfectly harmless, guileless 


270 DISTINGUISHED FROM MEN 


man, never doing ill even for a moment, we consider to 
be the same as to be a man destitute of spirit and 


—_.manly force. But Christ accomplished the impossible. 


—.., 


Appearing in all the grandeur and majesty of a super- 
human manhood, he is able still to unite the impression 
of innocence, with no apparent diminution of his sub- 
limity. It is, in fact, the distinctive glory of his char- 
acter, that it seems to be the natural unfolding of a 
divine innocence, a pure celestial childhood, amplified 
by growth. We feel the power of this strange combi- 
nation, but we have so great difficulty in conceiving it, 
or holding our minds to the conception, that we some- 
times subside or descend to the human level, and 
empty the character of Jesus of the strange element 
unawares. We read, for example, his terrible denun- 
ciations against the Pharisees, and are shocked by the 
violent, fierce sound they have on our mortal lips; not 
perceiving that the offense is in us, and notin him. We 
should suffer no such revulsion, did we only conceive 
them bursting out, as words of indignant grief, from the 
surcharged bosom of innocence, for there is nothing so 
bitter as the offense that innocence feels, when stung 
by hypocrisy and a sense of cruelty to the poor. So, 
when he drives the money-changers from the temple, 
we are likely to leave out the only element that saves 
him from a look of violence and passion. Whereas it 
is the very point of the story, not that he, as by mere 
force, can drive so many men, but that so many are 
seen retiring. before the moral power of one—a 
mysterious being, in whose face and form the indig- 
nant flush of innocence reveals a tremendous feeling 
they can no-wise comprehend, much less are able to 
resist. . 

Accustomed to no such demonstrations of vigor and 


BY HIS INNOCENCE 271 


decision in the innocent human characters, and having 
it as our way to set them down, without farther con- 
sideration, as 

Incapable and shallow innocents, — 


we turn the indignant fire of Jesus into a fire of malig- 
nity ; whereas it should rather be conceived that Jesus 
here reveals his divinity, by what so powerfully distin- 
guishes God himself, when he clothes his goodness in 
the tempests and thunders of nature. Decisive, great, 
and strong, Christ is yet all this, even the more sub- 
limely, that he is invested, withal, in the lovely but 
humanly feeble garb of innocence. And that this is 
the true conception, is clear, in the fact that no one 
ever thinks of him as weak, and no one fails to be 
somehow impressed with a sense of innocence by his 
life; when his enemies are called to show what evil or 
harm he hath done, they can specify nothing, save that 
he has offended their bigotry. Even Pilate, when he 
gives him up, confesses that he finds nothing in him to 
blame, and, shuddering with apprehensions he can not 
subdue, washes his hands to be clear of the innocent 
blood! Thus he dies, a being holy, harmless, undefiled. 
And when he hangs, a bruised flower drooping on his 
cross, and the sun above is dark, and the earth beneath 
shudders with pain, what have we in this funeral grief 
of the worlds, but a fit honor paid to the sad majesty 
of his divine innocence. 


We pass now to his religious character, which, we 
shall discover, has the remarkable distinction that it 
proceeds from a point exactly opposite to that which is 
the root, or radical element in the religious character 
of men. Human piety begins with repentance. It is 
the effort of a being implicated in wrong and writhing 


272 HIS RELIGIOUS CHARACTER 


under the stings of guilt, to come unto God. The 
most righteous, or even self-righteous, men blend ex- 
pressions of sorrow and vows of new obedience with 
Aheir exercises. But Christ, in the character given him, 

V never acknowledges sin. It is the grand peculiarity of 
his piety, that he never regrets any thing that he has 
done or been; expresses, nowhere, a single feeling of 
compunction, or the least sense of unworthiness. On 
the contrary, he boldly challenges his accusers, in the 
question — Which of you convinceth me of sin? and 
even declares, at the close of his life, in a solemn appeal 
to God, that he has given to men, unsullied, the glory 
divine that was deposited in him. 

Now the question is not whether Christ was, in fact, 
the faultless being, assumed in his religious character. 
All we have to notice here is that he makes the assump- 
tion, makes it not only in words, but in the very tenor 
of his exercises themselves, and that by this fact his 
piety is radically distinguished from all human piety. 
And no mere human creature, it is certain, could hold 
such a religious attitude, without shortly displaying 
faults that would cover him with derision, or excesses 
and delinquencies that would even disgust his friends. 
Piety without one dash of repentance, one ingenuous 
confession of wrong, one tear, one look of contrition, 
one request to heaven for pardon — let any one of man- 
kind try this kind of piety, and see how long it will be 
ere his righteousness will prove itself to be the most 
impudent conceit; how long, before his passions, 
sobered by no contrition, his pride kept down by no 
repentance, will tempt him into absurdities that will 
turn his pretenses to mockery. No sooner does any one 
of us begin to be self-righteous, than he begins to fall 
into outward sins that shame his conceit. But, in the 


IS WITHOUT REPENTANCE 273 


case of Jesus, no such disaster follows. Beginning with 
an impenitent, or unrepentant piety, he holds it to the 
end, and brings no visible stain upon it. 

Now, one of two things must be true. He was either 
sinless, or he was not. If sinless, what greater, more 
palpable exception to the law of human development, 
than that a perfect and stainless being has for once 
lived in the flesh! If not, which is the supposition 
required of those who deny every thing above the range 
of human development, then we have a man taking up 
a religion without repentance, a religion not human, but 
celestial, a style of piety never taught him in his child- 
hood, and never conceived or attempted among men — 
more than this, a style of piety, withal, wholly unsuited 
to his real character as a sinner, holding it as a figment 
of insufferable presumption to the end of life, and that 
in a way of such unfaltering grace and beauty, as to 
command the universal homage of the human race! 
Could there be a wider deviation from all we know of 
mere human development ? 


He was also able perfectly to unite elements of char- 
acter, that others find the greatest difficulty in uniting, 
however unevenly and partially. He is never said to 
have laughed, and yet he never produces the impression 
of austerity, moroseness, sadness, or even of being 
unhappy. On the contrary, he is described as one that 
appears to be commonly filled with a sacred joy; 
“rejoicing in spirit,” and leaving to his disciples, in the 
hour of his departure, the bequest of his joy —“ that 
they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” We_ 
could not long endure a human being whose face was 
never moved by laughter, or relaxed by a gladdening 
smile. What sympathy could we have with one who 


274 HE UNITES OPPOSITES, 


appears, in this manner, to have no human heart? We 
could not even trust him. And yet we have sympathy 
with Christ ; for there is somewhere in him an ocean of 
deep joy, and we see that he is, in fact, only burdened 
with his sympathy for us to such a degree, that his 
mighty life.is overcast and oppressed by the charge he 
has undertaken. His lot is the lot of privation, he has 
no powerful friends, he has not even where to lay his 
head. No human being could appear in such a guise, 
without occupying us much with the sense of his afflic- 
tion. We should be descending to him, as it were, in 
pity. But we never pity Christ, never think of him as 
struggling with the disadvantages of a lower level, to 
rise above it. In fact, he does not allow us, after all, 
to think much of his privations. We think of him 
more as a being of mighty resources, proving himself, 
only the more sublimely, that he is in the guise of 
destitution. He is the most unworldly of beings, 
having no desire at all for what the world can give, 
impossible to be caught with any longing for its benefits, 
impassible even to its charms, and yet there is no ascetic 
sourness or repugnance, no misanthropic distaste in his 
manner; as if he were bracing himself against the 
world to keep it off. The more closely he is drawn to 
other worlds, the more fresh and susceptible is he to 
the humanities of this. The little child is an image of 
gladness, which his heart leaps forth to embrace. The 
wedding and the feast and the funeral have all their 
cord of sympathy in his bosom. At the wedding he is 
clothed in congratulation, at the feast in doctrine, at 
the funeral in tears; but no miser was ever drawn to 
his money, with a stronger desire, than he to worlds 
above the world. Men undertake to be spiritual, and 
they become ascetic ; or, endeavoring to hold a liberal 


AS NO HUMAN SAINT EVER DOES 275 


view of the comforts and pleasures of society, they are 
soon buried in the world, and slaves to its fashions ; or, 
holding a scrupulous watch to keep out every particular 
sin, they become legal, and fall out of liberty ; or, charmed 
with the noble and heavenly liberty, they run to negli- 
gence and irresponsible living; so the earnest become 
violent, the fervent fanatical and censorious, the gentle 
waver, the firm turn bigots, the liberal grow lax, the 
benevolent ostentatious. Poor human infirmity can 
hold nothing steady. Where the pivot of righteousness 
is broken, the scales must needs slide off their balance. 
Indeed, it is one of the most difficult things which a 
cultivated Christian can attempt, only to sketch a 
theoretic view of character, in its true justness and pro- 
portion, so that a little more study, or a little more 
self-experience, will not require him to modify it. And 
yet the character of Christ is never modified, even by a 
shade of rectification. It is one and the same throughout. 
He makes no improvements, prunes no extravagances, 
returns from no eccentricities. The balance of his 
character is never disturbed, or readjusted, and the 
astounding assumption on which it is based is never 
shaken, even by a suspicion that he falters in it. 


There is yet another point related to this, in which 
the attitude of Jesus is even more distinct from any 
that was ever taken by man, and is yet triumphantly 
sustained. I speak of the astonishing pretensions 
asserted concerning his person. Similar pretensions 
have sometimes been assumed by maniacs, or insane 
persons, but never, so far as I know, by persons in the 
proper exercise of their reason. Certain it is that no 
mere man could take the same attitude of supremacy 
toward the race, and inherent affinity or oneness with 


276 HIS ASTONISHING PRETENSIONS 


God, without fatally shocking the confidence of the 
world by his effrontery. Imagine a human creature 
saying to the world —“I came forth from the Father” 
—‘“ ye are from beneath, I am from above; ” facing all 
the intelligence and even the philosophy of the world, 
and saying, in bold assurance — “ behold, a greater than 
Solomon is here” —‘“I am the light of the world” 
— “the way, the truth, and the life;” publishing to 
all peoples and religions—‘ No man cometh to the 
Father, but by me;” promising openly in his death — 
‘7 will draw all men unto me; ” addressing the Infinite 
Majesty, and testifying — “I have glorified thee on the 
earth ;” calling to the human race — “ Come unto me,” 
“follow me”; laying his hand upon all the dearest and 
most intimate affections of life, and demanding a prece- 
dent love — “he that loveth father or mother more than 
me, is not worthy of me.” Was there ever displayed 
an example of effrontery and spiritual conceit so pre- 
posterous? Was there ever a man that dared put him- 
self on the world in such pretensions? —as if all light 
was in him, as if to follow him and be worthy of him 
was to be the conclusive or chief excellence of mankind! 
What but mockery and disgust does he challenge as the 
certain reward of his audacity! But no one is offended 
with Jesus on this account, and what is a sure test of 
his success it is remarkable that, of all the readers of 
the gospel, it probably never even occurs to one in a 
hundred thousand, to blame his conceit, or the egregious 
vanity of his pretensions. 

Nor is there any thing disputable in these pretensions, 
least of all, any trace of myth or fabulous tradition. 
They enter into the very web of his ministry, so that if 
they are extracted and nothing left transcending mere 
humanity, nothing at all is left. Indeed there is a tacit 


ARE FULLY SUPPORTED 277 


assumption, continually maintained, that far exceeds 
the range of these formal pretensions. He says—‘“I 
and the Father that sent me.” What figure would a 
man present in such language —I and the Father? He 
goes even beyond this, and apparently without any 
thought of excess or presumption, classing himself with 
the infinite Majesty in a common plural, he says — “* We 
will come unto him, and make owr abode with him.” 
Imagine any, the greatest and holiest of mankind, any 
prophet, or apostle, saying we, of himself and the Great 
Jehovah! What a conception did he give us concern- 
ing himself, when he assumed the necessity of such 
information as this— “my Father is greater than I;” 
and above all, when he calls himself, as he often does, 
in a tone of condescension — “the Son of Man.” See 
him also on the top of Olivet, looking down on the 
guilty city and weeping words of compassion like these 
—imagine some man weeping over London or New York, 
in the like —“ How often would I have gathered thy 
children together as a hen doth gather her chickens 
under her wings, and ye would not!” See him also in 
the supper, instituting a rite of remembrance for him- 
self, a scorned, outcast man, and saying —“ this is my 
body ” — “this do in remembrance of me.” 

I have dwelt thus on the transcendent pretensions of 
Jesus, because there is an argument here for his super- 
humanity, which can not be resisted. For eighteen 
hundred years, these prodigious assumptions have been 
published and preached to a world that is quick to lay 
hold of conceit, and bring down the lofty airs of pre- 
tenders, and yet, during all this time, whole nations of 
people, composing as well the learned and powerful as 
the ignorant and humble, have paid their homage to the 
name of Jesus, detecting never any disagreement be- 


278 HIS PRETENSIONS ARE SUPPORTED 


tween his merits and his pretensions, offended never by 
any thought of his extravagance. In which we have 
absolute proof that he practically maintains his amazing 
assumptions! Indeed it will even be found that, in the 
common apprehension of the race, he maintains the 
merit of a most peculiar modesty, producing no convic- 
tion more distinctly, than that of his intense lowliness 
and humility. His worth is seen to be so great, his 
authority so high, his spirit so celestial, that instead of 
being offended by his pretensions, we take the impres- 
sion of one in whom it is even a condescension to breathe 
our air. I say not that his friends and followers take 
this impression, it is received as naturally and irresistibly 
by unbelievers. I do not recollect any skeptic, or infi- 
del, who has even thought to accuse him as a conceited 
person, or to assault. him in this, the weakest and 
absurdest, if not the strongest and holiest, point of his 
character. 

Come now, all ye that tell us in your wisdom of the 
mere natural humanity of Jesus, and help us to find how 
it is, that he is only a natural development of the human; 
select your best and-wisest character; take the range, if 
you will, of all the great philosophers and saints, and 
choose out one that is most competent ; or if, perchance, 
some one of you may imagine that he is himself about 
upon a level with Jesus, (as we hear that some of you 
do,) let him come forward in this trial and say — “ follow 
me” — ‘be worthy of me” —“TI am the light of the 
world”? — “ye are from beneath, I am from above” — 
“behold a greater than Solomon is here ;” take on all 
these transcendent assumptions, and see how soon your 
glory will be sifted out of you by the detective gaze, 
and darkened by the contempt of mankind! Why not; 
is not the challenge fair? Do you not tell us that you 


HE EXCELS IN PASSIVE VIRTUES 279 


can say as divine things as he? Is it not in you too, of 
course, to do what is human? are you not in the front 
rank of human developments? do you not rejoice in the 
power to rectify many mistakes and errors in the words 
of Jesus? Give us then this one experiment, and see if 
it does not prove to you a truth that is of some conse- 
quence ; viz., that you are a man, and that Jesus Christ 
is — more. 


But there is also a passive side to the character of 
Jesus, which is equally peculiar and which also demands 
our attention. I recollect no really great character in 
history, excepting such as may have been formed under 
Christianity, that can properly be said to have united 
the passive virtues, or to have considered them any es- 
sential part of a finished character. Socrates comes the 
nearest to such an impression, and therefore most resem- 
bles Christ in the submissiveness of his death. It does 
not appear, however, that his mind had taken this turn 
previously to his trial, and the submission he makes to 
the public sentence is, in fact, a refusal only to escape 
from the prison surreptitiously ; which he does, partly 
because he thinks it the duty of every good citizen not 
to break the laws, and partly, if we judge from his 
manner, because he is detained by a subtle pride, as if 
it were something unworthy of a grave philosopher to 
be stealing away, as a fugitive, from the laws and tribu- 
nals of his country. The Stoics indeed have it for one 
of their great principles, that the true wisdom of life 
consists in a passive power, viz., in being able to bear 
suffering rightly. But they mean by this the bearing 
of suffering so as not to feel it; a steeling of the mind 
against sensibility, and a raising of the will into such 
power as to drive back the pangs of life, or shake them 


280 HE IS NEVER DISCOMPOSED 


off. But this, in fact, contains no allowance of passive 
virtue at all; on the contrary, it is an attempt so to 
exalt the active powers, as to even exclude every sort 
of passion, or passivity. And Stoicism corresponds, in 
this respect, with the general sentiment of the world’s 
great characters. They are such as like to see things 
in the heroic vein, to see spirit and courage breasting 
themselves against wrong, and, where the evil can not 
be escaped by resistance, dying in a manner of defiance. 
Indeed it has been the impression of the world gener- 
ally, that patience, gentleness, readiness to suffer wrong 
without resistance, is but another name for weakness. 

But Christ, in opposition to all such impressions, man- 
ages to connect these non-resisting and gentle passivities 
with a character of the severest grandeur and majesty ; 
and, what is more, convinces us that no truly great char- 
acter can exist without them. 

Observe him, first, in what may be called the common 
trials of existence. For if you will put a character to 
the severest of all tests,see whether it can bear, without 
faltering, the little, common ills and hindrances of life. 
Many a man will go to his martyrdom, with a spirit of 
firmness and heroic composure, whom a little weariness 
or nervous exhaustion, some silly prejudice, or capricious 
opposition, would, for the moment, throw into a fit of 
vexation, or ill-nature. Great occasions rally great 
principles, and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a 
bearing that is even above itself. But trials that 
make no occasion at all leave it to show the goodness 
and beauty it has in its own disposition. And here 
precisely is the superhuman glory of Christ as a character, 
that he is just as perfect, exhibits just as great a spirit. 
in little trials as in great ones. In all the history of 
his life, we are not able to detect the faintest indi- 


BY HINDRANCES AND TRIALS 281 


cation that he slips or falters. And this is the 
more remarkable, that he is prosecuting so great a 
work, with so great enthusiasm; counting it his 
meat and drink, and pouring into it all the energies 
of his life. For when men have great works on hand, 
their very enthusiasm runs to impatience. When 
thwarted or unreasonably hindered, their soul strikes 
fire against the obstacles they meet, they worry them- 
selves at every hindrance, every disappointment, and 
break out in stormy and fanatical violence. But Jesus, 
for some reason, is just as even, just as serene, in all his 
petty vexations, and hindrances, as if he had nothing on 
hand to do. A kind of sacred patience invests him 
every where. Having no element of crude will mixed 
with his work, he is able, in all trial and opposition, to 
hold a condition of serenity above the clouds, and let 
them sail under him, without ever obscuring the sun. 
He is poor, and hungry, and weary, and despised, 
insulted by his enemies, deserted by his friends, but 
never disheartened, never fretted or ruffled. You see, 
meantime, that he is no stoic; he visibly feels every 
such ill as his delicate and sensitive nature must, but he 
has some sacred and sovereign good present, to mingle 
with his pains, which, as it were, naturally and without 
any self-watching, allays them. He does not seem to rule 
his temper, but rather to have none; for temper, in 
the sense of passion, is a fury that follows the will, 
as the lightnings follow the disturbing forces of the 
winds among the clouds, and accordingly where there 
is no self-will to roll up the clouds and hurl them 
through the sky, the lightnings hold their equilibrium 
and are as though they were not. 

As regards what is called pre-eminently his passion, 
the scene of martyrdom that closes his life, it is easy to 


282 HIS AGONY NOT HUMAN 


distinguish a character in it which separates it from all 
-mere human martyrdoms. Thus, it will be observed 
that his agony, the scene in which his suffering is 
bitterest and most evident, is, on human principles, 
wholly misplaced. It comes before the time, when as 
yet there is no arrest, and no human prospect that there 
will be any. He is at large to go where he pleases, and 
in perfect outward safety. His disciples have just been 
gathered round him in a scene of more than family 
tenderness and affection. Indeed it is but a very few 
hours since that he was coming into the city, at the 
head of a vast procession, followed by loud acclama- 
tions, and attended by such honors as may fitly cele- 
brate the inaugural of a king. Yet here, with no bad 
sign apparent, we see him plunged into a scene of 
deepest distress, and racked, in his feeling, with a more 
than mortal agony. Coming out of this, assured and 
comforted, he is shortly arrested, brought to trial, and 
crucified ; where, if there be any thing questionable in 
his manner, it is in the fact that he is even more com- 
posed than some would have him to be, not even 
stooping to defend himself or vindicate his innocence. 
And when he dies, it is not as when the martyrs die. 
They die for what they have said, and remaining silent 
will not recant. He dies for what he has not said, and 
still is silent. 

By the misplacing of his agony thus, and the strange 
silence he observes when the real hour of agony is 
come, we are put entirely at fault on natural principles. 
But it was not for him to wait, as being only a man, 
till he is arrested and the hand of death is before him, 
then to be nerved by the occasion to a show of victory. 
He that was before Abraham, must also be before his 
occasions. In a time of safety, in a cool hour of retire- 


HIS AGONY NOT HUMAN 283 


ment, unaccountably to his friends, he falls into a 
dreadful contest and struggle of mind; coming out of 
it, finally, to go through his most horrible tragedy of 
crucifixion, with the serenity of a spectator ! 

Why now this so great intensity of sorrow? why this 
agony? Was there not something unmanly in it, some- 
thing unworthy of a really great soul? Take him to 
be only a man, and there probably was; nay, if he were 
a woman, the same might be said. But this one thing 
is clear, that no one of mankind, whether man or woman, 
ever had the sensibility to suffer so intensely; even 
showing the body, for the mere struggle and pain of 
the mind, exuding and dripping with blood. Evidently 
there is something mysterious here; which mystery is 
vehicle to our feeling, and rightfully may be, of some- 
thing divine. What, we begin to ask, should be the 
power of a superhuman sensibility? and how far should 
the human vehicle shake under such a power? How 
too should an innocent and pure spirit be exercised, 
when about to suffer, in his own person, the greatest 
wrong ever committed ? 

Besides there is a vicarious spirit in love; all love 
inserts itself vicariously into the sufferings and woes 
and, in a certain sense, the sins of others, taking them 
on itself as a burden. How then, if perchance Jesus 
should be divine, an embodiment of God’s love in the 
world — how should he feel, and by what signs of feel- 
ing manifest his sensibility, when a fallen race are just 
about to do the damning sin that crowns their guilty 
history; to crucify the only perfect being that ever 
came into the world; to crucify even him, the mes- 
senger and representative to them of the love of God, 
the deliverer who has taken their case and cause 
upon him! Whosoever duly ponders these questions, 


284 HIS PASSION A MYSTERY 


will find that he is led away, more and more, from 
any supposition of the mere mortality of Jesus. 
What he looks upon, he will more and more dis- 
tinctly see to be the pathology of a superhuman an- 
guish. It stands, he will perceive, in no mortal key. 
It will be to him the anguish, visibly, not of any 
¢ pusillanimous feeling, but of holy character itself ; nay, 
of a mysteriously transcendent, or somehow divine, 
character. 

But why did he not defend his cause and justify his 
innocence in the trial? Partly because he had the 
wisdom to see that there really was and could be no 
trial, and that one who undertakes to plead with a mob, 
only mocks his own virtue, throwing words into the air 
that is already filled with the clamors of prejudice. 
To plead innocence in such a case, is only to make a 
protestation, such as indicates fear, and is really un- 
worthy of a great and composed spirit. A man would 
have done it, but Jesus did not. Besides, there was a 
plea of innocence, in the manner of Jesus and the few 
very significant words that he dropped that had an effect 
on the mind of Pilate, more searching and powerful than 
any formal protestations. And the more we study the 
conduct of Jesus during the whole scene, the more shall 
we be satisfied that he said enough; the more admire the 
mysterious composure, the wisdom, the self-possession, 
and the superhuman patience of the sufferer. It was 
visibly the death scene of a transcendent love. He dies 
not as a man, but rather as some one might, who is mys- 
teriously more and higher. So thought aloud the hard- 
faced soldier —“ Truly this was the Son of God.” As 
if he had said — “I have seen men die — this is not a 
man. They call him Son of God— he can not be less.” 
Can he be less to us? 


Ft 


HIS UNDERTAKING NOT HUMAN 285 


But Christ shows himself to be a superhuman charac- 
ter, not in the personal traits only, exhibited in his life, 
but even more sublimely in the undertakings, works, 
and teachings by which he proved his Messiahship. 

Consider then the reach of his undertaking; which, 
if he was only a man, shows him to have been the most 
extravagant and even wildest of all human enthusiasts. 
Contrary to every religious prejudice of his nation and 
even of his time, contrary to the comparatively narrow 
and exclusive religion of Moses itself and to all his 
training under it, he undertakes to organize a kingdom 
of God, or kingdom of heaven on earth. His purpose 
includes a new moral creation of the race—not of the 
Jews only and of men proselyted to their covenant, but 
of the whole human race. He declared thus, at an 
early date in his ministry, that many shall come from 
the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, and 
Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God; that the field 
is the world; and that God so loves the world, as to 
give for it his only begotten Son. He also declared 
that his gospel shall be published to all nations, and 
gave his apostles their commission, to go into all the 
world and publish his gospel to every creature. 

Here then we have the grand idea of his mission — it 
is to new-create the human race and restore it to God, 
in the unity of a spiritual kingdom. And upon this 
single fact, Reinhard erects a complete argument for his 
extra-human character; going into a formal review of 
all the great founders of states and most celebrated law- 
givers, the great heroes and defenders of nations, all the 
wise kings and statesmen, all the philosophers, all the 
prophet founders of religions, and discovering as a fact 
that no such thought as this, or nearly proximate to 
this, had ever before been taken up by any living char- 


286 BUT HIS CONFIDENCE 


acter in history ; showing also how it had happened to 
every other great character, however liberalized by cul- 
ture, to be limited in some way to the interest of his 
own people, or empire, and set in opposition, or antago- 
nism, more or less decidedly, to the rest of the world. 
But to Jesus alone, the simple Galilean carpenter, it 
happens otherwise ; that, having never seen a map of 
the world in his whole life, or heard the name of half 
the great nations on it, he undertakes, coming out of 
his shop, a scheme as much vaster and more difficult 
than that of Alexander, as it proposes more and what 
is more divinely benevolent! This thought of a uni- 
versal kingdom, cemented in God — why, the immense 
Roman Empire of his day, constructed by so many ages 
of war and conquest, is a bauble in comparison, both as; ° 
regards the extent and the cost! And yet the rustic 
tradesman of Galilee propounds even this for his errand, 
and that in a way of assurance, as simple and quiet, as 
if the immense reach of his plan were, in fact, a matter 
to him of no consideration. 

Nor is this all, there is included in his plan, what, to 
any mere man, would be yet more remote from the pos- 
sible confidence of his frailty ; it is a plan as universal 
in time, as it is in the scope of its objects. It does not 
expect to be realized in a life-time, or even in many 
centuries to come. He calls it, understandingly, his 
grain of mustard seed ; which, however, is to grow, he 
declares, and overshadow the whole earth. But the 
courage of Jesus, counting a thousand years to be only 
a single day, is equal to the run of his work. He sees 
a rock of stability, where men see only frailty and 
weakness. Peter himself, the impulsive and always 
unreliable Peter, turns into rock and becomes a great 
foundation, as he looks upon him. “On this rock,” he 


NEVER FALTERS 287 


says, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it.” His expectation too 
reaches boldly out beyond his own death; that in fact 
is to be the seed of his great empire — “except a corn 
of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth,” he 
says, “alone.” And if we will see with what confidence 
and courage he adheres to his plan, when the time of 
his death approaches — how far he is from giving it up 
as lost, or as an exploded vision of his youthful enthu- 
siasm — we have only to observe his last interview with 
the two sisters of Bethany, in whose hospitality he was 
so often comforted. When the box of precious oint- 
ment is broken upon his head, which Judas reproves as 
a useless expense, he discovers a sad propriety, or even 
prophecy, in what the woman has done, as connected 
with his death, now at hand. But it does not touch 
his courage, we perceive, or the confidence of his plan, 
or even cast a shade on his prospect. “Let her alone. 
She hath done what she could. She is come aforehand 
to anoint my body to the burying. Verily I say unto 
you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached through- 
out the whole world, this also that this woman hath 
done shall be told for a memorial of her.” Such was 
the sublime confidence he had in a plan that was to run 
through all future ages, and would scarcely begin to 
show its fruit during his own life time. 

Is this great idea, then, which no man ever before 
conceived, the raising of the whole human race to God, 
a plan sustained with such evenness of courage, and a 
confidence of the world’s future so far transcending 
any human example —is this a human development? 
Regard the benevolence of it, the universality of it, the 
religious grandeur of it, as a work readjusting the 
relations of God and his government with men — 


288 HIS EXPECTATION 


the cost, the length of time it will cover, and the far 
off date of its completion—is it in this scale that a 
Nazarene carpenter, a poor uneducated villager, lays 
out his plans and graduates the confidence of his under- 
takings? There have been great enthusiasts in the 
world, and they have shown their infirmity by lunatic 
airs, appropriate to their extravagance. But it is not 
human, we may safely affirm, to lay out projects tran- 
scending all human ability, like this of Jesus, and which 
can not be completed in many thousands of years, doing 
it in all the airs of sobriety, entering on the perform- 
ance without parade, and yielding life to it firmly as 
the inaugural of its triumph. No human creature sits 
quietly down to a perpetual project, one that proposes 
to be executed only at the end, or final harvest of the 
world. That is not human, but divine. 


Passing now to what is more interior in his ministry, 
taken as a revelation of his character, we are struck 
with another distinction ; viz., that he takes rank with 
the poor, and grounds all the immense expectations of 
his cause on a beginning made with the lowly and 
dejected classes of the world. He was born to the lot 
of the poor. His manners, tastes, and intellectual at- 
tainments, however, visibly outgrew his condition, and 
that in such a degree that, if he had been a mere human 
character, he must have suffered some painful distaste 
for the kind of society in which he lived. The great, 
as we perceive, flocked to hear him, and sometimes 
came even by night to receive his instructions. He 
saw the highest circles of society and influence open to 
him, if he only desired to enter them. And, if he was 
a properly human character, what virtuous, but rising 
young man would have had a thought of impropriety. 


IS IN THE POOR 289 


in accepting the elevation within his reach; consider- 
ing it as the proper reward of his industry and the 
merit of his character — not to speak of the contempt 
for his humble origin, and his humble associates, which 
every upstart person of only ordinary virtue is so com- 
monly seen to manifest. Still he adheres to the poor, 
and makes them the object of his ministry. And what 
is more peculiar, he visibly has a kind of interest in 
their society, which is wanting in that of the higher 
classes ; perceiving, apparently, that they have a cer- 
tain aptitude for receiving right impressions, which the 
others have not. They are not the wise and prudent, 
filled with the conceit of learning and station, but they 
are the ingenuous babes of poverty, open to conviction, 
prepared, by their humble lot, to receive thoughts and 
doctrines in advance of their age. Therefore he loves 
the poor, and, without descending to their low manners, 
he delights to be identified with them. He is more 
assiduous in their service than other men have been in 
serving the great. He goes about on foot, teaching 
them and healing their sick ; occupying his great and 
elevated mind, for whole years, with details of labor 
and care, which the nurse of no hospital had ever laid 
upon him — £insanities, blind eyes, fevers, fluxes, lep- 
_Yosies, and sores. His patients are all below his level 
and unable to repay him, even by a breath of congenial 
sympathy ; and nothing supports him but the conscious- 
ness of good which attends his labors. 

Meantime, consider what contempt for the poor had 
hitherto prevailed, among all the great statesmen and 
philanthropists of the world. The poor were not 
society, or any part of society. They were only the 
conveniences and drudges of society ; appendages of 
luxury and state, tools of ambition, material to be used 


290 HIS EXPECTATION IS IN THE POOR 


in the wars. No man who had taken up the idea of 
some great change or reform in society, no philosopher 
who had conceived the notion of building up an ideal 
state or republic, ever thought of beginning with the 
poor. Influence was seen to reside in the higher classes, 
and the only hope of reaching the world, by any scheme 
of social regeneration, was to begin with them, and 
through them operate its results. But Christ, if we 
call him a philosopher, and, if he is only a man, we can 
call him by no higher name, was the poor man’s philoso- 
pher; the first and only one that had ever appeared. 
Seeing the higher circles open to him, and tempted to 
imagine that, if he could once get footing for his 
doctrine among the influential and the great, he should 
thus secure his triumph more easily, he had yet no such 
thought. He laid his foundations, as it were, below 
all influence, and, as men would judge, threw himself 
away. And precisely here did he display a wisdom 
and a character totally in advance of hisage. Eighteen 
centuries have passed away, and we now seem just 
beginning to understand the transcendent depth of this 
feature in his mission and his character. We appear 
to be just waking up to it as a discovery, that the 
blessing and upraising of the masses are the funda- 
mental interest of society — a discovery, however, which 
is only a proof that the life of Jesus has, at length, 
begun to penetrate society and public history. It is 
precisely this which is working so many and great 
changes in our times, giving liberty and right to the 
enslaved many, seeking their education, encouraging 
their efforts by new and better hopes, producing an 
aversion to war, which has been the fatal source of 
their misery and depression, and opening, as we hope, 
a new era of comfort, light, and virtue in the world. 


HE BECOMES THEIR PATRON 291 


It is as if some higher and better thought had visited 
our race — which higher thought is in the life of Jesus. 
The schools of all the philosophers are gone, hundreds 
of years ago, and all their visions have died away into 
thin air; but the poor man’s philosopher still lives, 
bringing up his poor to liberty, light, and character, 
and drawing the nations on to a brighter and better 
day. 


At the same time, the more than human character of 
Jesus is displayed also in the fact that, identifying him- 
self thus with the poor, he is yet able to do it, without 
eliciting any feelings of partisanship in them. To one 
who will be at the pains to reflect a little, nothing will 
seem more difficult than this; to become the patron of 
a class, a down-trodden and despised class, without 
rallying in them a feeling of intense malignity. And 
that for the reason, partly, that no patron, however just 
or magnanimous, is ever quite able to suppress the feel- 
ings of a partisan in himself. A little ambition, pricked 
on by a little abuse, a faint desire of popularity playing 
over the face of his benevolence, and tempting him to 
loosen a little of ill-nature, as tinder to the passions of 
his sect — something of this kind is sure to kindle some 
fire of malignity in his clients. 

Besides, men love to be partisans. Even Paul and 
Apollos and Peter had their sects, or schools, glorying 
in one against another. With all their efforts, they 
could not suppress a weakness so contemptible. But 
no such feeling could ever get footing under Christ. 
If his disciples had forbidden one to heal in the name 
of Jesus, because he followed not with them, he gently 
rebuked them, and made them feel that he had larger 
views than to suffer any such folly. As the friend of 


292 HE WILL NOT HAVE THEM PARTISANS 


the poor and oppressed class, he set himself openly 
against their enemies, and chastised them as oppressors, 
with the most terrible rebukes. He exposed the absurd- 
ity of their doctrine, and silenced them in argument ; he 
launched his thunderbolts against their base hypocri- 
sies; but it does not appear that the populace ever 
testified their pleasure, even by a cheer, or gave vent to 
any angry emotion under cover of his leadership. For 
there was something still, in the manner and air of 
Jesus, which made them feel it to be inappropriate, and 
even made it impossible. It was as if some being were 
here, taking their part, whom it were even an irrever- 
ence to applaud, much more to second by any partisan 
clamor. They would as soon have thought of cheer- 
ing the angel in the sun, or of rallying under him as the 
head of their faction. On one occasion, when he had 
fed the multitudes by a miracle, he saw that their na- 
tional superstitions were excited, and that, regarding 
him as the Messiah predicted in the scriptures, they 
were about to take him by force and make him their 
king ; but this was a national feeling, not the feeling 
of aclass. Its root was superstition, not hatred. His 
triumphal entry into Jerusalem, attended by the ac- 
clamations of the multitude, if this be not one of the 
fables or myths, which our modern criticism rejects, is 
yet no demonstration of popular faction, or party ani- 
mosity. Robbing it of its mystical and miraculous 
character, as the inaugural of the Messiah, it has no 
real signification. In a few hours, after all, these 
hosannas are hushed. Jesus is alone and forsaken, 
and the very multitudes he might seem to have enlisted, 
are crying, “Crucify him!” On the whole, it can not 
be said that Jesus was ever popular. He was followed, 
at times, by great multitudes of people, whose love of 


ORIGINALITY OF HIS TEACHING 293 


the marvelous worked on their superstitions, to draw 
them after him. They came also to be cured of their 
diseases. They knew him as their friend. But there 
was yet something in him that forbade their low and 
malignant feelings gathering into a conflagration round 
him. He presents, indeed, an instance that stands 
alone in history, as God at the summit of the worlds, 
where a person has indentified himself with a class, 
without creating a faction, and without becoming a 
popular character. 


Consider him next as a teacher; his method and 
manner, and the other characteristics of his excellence, 
apart from his doctrine. That will be distinctly con- 
sidered in another place. 

First of all, we notice the perfect originality and 
independence of his teaching. We have a great many 
men who are original, in the sense of being originators, 
within a certain boundary of educated thought. But 
the originality of Christ is uneducated. That he 
draws nothing from the stores of learning, can be seen 
at a glance. The impression we have in reading his 
instructions, justifies to the letter, the language of his 
cotemporaries, when they say, “this man hath never 
learned.” There is nothing in any of his allusions, or 
forms of speech, that indicates learning. Indeed, there 
is nothing in him that belongs to his age or country — 
no one opinion, or taste, or prejudice. The attempts 
that have been made, in a way of establishing his mere 
natural manhood, to show that he borrowed his senti- 
ments from the Persians and the eastern forms of reli- 
gion, or that he had been intimate with the Essenes and 
borrowed from them, or that he must have been ac- 
quainted with the schools and religions of Egypt, 


294 HIS TEACHING 


deriving his doctrine from them —all attempts of the 
kind have so palpably failed, as not even to require 
a deliberate answer. If he is simply a man, as we 
hear, then he is most certainly a new and singular kind 
of man, never before heard of, one who visibly is quite 
as great a miracle in the world as if he were not a man. 
We can see for ourselves, in the simple directness and 
freedom of his teachings, that whatever he advances is 
from himself. Shakspeare, for instance, whom we 
name as being probably the most creative and original 
spirit the world has ever produced, one of the class, 
too, that are called self-made men, is yet tinged, in all 
his works, with human learning. His glory is, indeed, 
that so much of what is great in history and historic 
character, lives and appears in his dramatic creations. 
He is the high-priest, we sometimes hear, of human 
nature. But Christ, understanding human nature so as 
to address it more skillfully than he, derives no help 
from historic examples. He is the high-priest, rather, 
of the divine nature, speaking as one that has come out 
from God, and has nothing to borrow from the world. 
It is not to be detected, by any sign, that the human 
sphere in which he moved imparted any thing to him. 
His teachings are just as full of divine nature, as Shak- 
speare’s of human. 

Neither does he teach by the human methods. He 
does not speculate about God, as a school professor, 
drawing out conclusions by a practice on words, and 
deeming that the way of proof; he does not build up a 
frame of evidence from below, by some constructive 
process, such as the philosophers delight in; but he 
simply speaks of God and spiritual things as one who 
has come out from him, to tell us what he knows. 
And his simple telling brings us the reality; proves it 


NO DIALECTICS, NO ART 295 


to us in its own sublime self-evidence; awakens even 
the consciousness of it in our own bosom; so that formal 
arguments or dialectic proofs offend us by their cold- 
ness, and seem, in fact, to be only opaque substances set 
between us and the light. Indeed, he makes even the 
world luminous by his words — fills it with an immedi- 
ate and new sense of God, which nothing has ever been 
able to expel. The incense of the upper world is 
brought out, in his garments, and flows abroad, as a 
perfume, on the poisoned air. 

At the same time, he never reveals the infirmity so 
commonly shown by human teachers, when they veer a 
little from their point, or turn their doctrine off by 
shades of variation, to catch the assent of multitudes. 
He never conforms to an expectation, even of his friends. 
When they look to find a great prophet in him, he offers 
nothing in the modes of the prophets. When they ask 
for places of distinction in his kingdom, he rebukes their 
folly, and tells them he has nothing to give, but a share 
in his reproaches and his poverty. When they look to 
see him take the sword as the Great Messiah of their 
nation, calling the people to his standard, he tells them 
he is no warrior and no king, but only a messenger of 
love to lost men; one that has come to minister and 
die, but not to set up or restore the kingdom. Every 
expectation that rises up to greet him, is repulsed ; and 
yet, so great is the power of his manner, that multitudes 
are held fast, and can not yield their confidence. En- 
veloped as he is in the darkest mystery, they trust him 
still; going after him, hanging on his words, as if de- 
tained by some charmed influence, which they can not 
shake off or resist. Never was there a teacher that so 
uniformly baffled every expectation of his followers, 
never one that was followed so persistently. 


296 HIS COMPREHENSIVENESS IS PERFECT 


Again, the singular balance of character displayed in 
the teachings of Jesus, indicates an exemption from the 
standing infirmity of human nature. Human opinions 
are formed under a law that seems to be universal. 
First, two opposite extremes are thrown up, in two 
opposite leaders or parties; then a third party enters, 
trying to find what truth they both are endeavoring to 
vindicate, and settle thus a view of the subject, that 
includes the truth and clears the one-sided extremes, 
which opposing words or figures, not yet measured in 
their force, had produced. It results, in this manner, 
that no man, even the broadest in his apprehensions, 
is ever at the point of equilibrium as regards all sub- 
jects. Even the ripest of us are continually falling 
into some extreme, and losing our balance, afterward 
to be corrected by some other who discovers our error, 
or that of our school. 

But Christ was of no school or party, and never went 
to any extreme — words could never turn him to a one- 
sided view of any thing. This is the remarkable fact 
that distinguishes him from any other known teacher 
of the world. Having nothing to work out in a word 
process, but every thing clear in the simple intuition of 
his superhuman intelligence, he never pushes himself to 
any human eccentricity. It does not even appear that 
he is trying, as we do, to balance opposites and clear 
extravagances, but he does it, as one who can not im- 
agine a one-sided view of any thing. He is never a 
radical, never a conservative. He will not allow his 
disciples to deny him before kings and governors, he 
will not let them renounce their allegiance to Cesar. 
He exposes the oppressions of the Pharisees in Moses’ 
seat, but, encouraging no factious resistance, says — 
“do as they command you.” His position as a Te 


HE IS CLEAR OF SUPERSTITION 297 


former was universal—according to his principles 
almost nothing, whether in church or state, or in social 
life, was right — and yet he is thrown into no antago- 
nism against the world. How a man will do, when he 
engages only in some one reform, acting from his own 
human force ; the fuming, storming phrenzy, the holy 
rage and tragic smoke of his violence, how he kindles 
against opposition, grows bitter and restive because of 
delay, and finally comes to maturity in a character 
thoroughly detestable—all this we know. But Christ, 
with all the world upon his hands, and a reform to be 
carried in almost every thing, is yet as quiet and cor- 
dial, and as little in the attitude of bitterness or impa- 
tience, as if all hearts were with him, or the work 
already done: so perfect is the balance of his feeling, 
so intuitively moderated is it by a wisdom not human. 

We can not stay to sketch a full outline’ of this par- 
ticular and sublime excellence, as it it was displayed in 
his life. It will be seen as clearly in a single compari- 
son or contrast, as in many, or in a more extended 
inquiry. Take, then, for an example, what may be 
observed in his open repugnance to all superstition, 
combined with his equal repugnance to what is com- 
monly praised as a mode of liberality. He lived ina 
superstitious age and among a superstitious people. 
He was a person of low education, and nothing, as 
we know, clings to the uneducated mind with the 
tenacity of a superstition. Lord Bacon, for example, 
aman certainly of the very highest intellectual train- 
ing, was yet infested by superstitions too childish to be 
named with respect, and which clung to him, despite 
of all his philosophy, even to his death. But Christ, 
with no learned culture at all, comes forth out of Gali- 
lee, as perfectly clean of all the superstitions of his 


298 NO SUPERSTITION 


time, as if he had been a disciple, from his childhood, of 
Hume or Strauss. “You children of superstition think,” 
he says, ‘‘that those Galileans, whose blood Pilate 
mingled with their sacrifices, and those eighteen upon 
whom the tower in Siloam fell, must have been monsters, 
to suffer such things. I tell you, nay; but except ye 
repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” To another com- 
pany he says—‘“ You imagine, in your Pharisaic and 
legal morality, that the Sabbath of Moses stands in 
the letter; but I tell you that the Sabbath is made for 
man, and not man for the Sabbath ; little honor, there- 
fore, do you pay to God, when you teach that it is not 
lawful to do good on this day. Your washings are a 
great point, you tithe herbs and seeds with a sancti- 
monious fidelity, would it not be as well for you teach- 
ers of the law to have some respect to the weightier 
matters of justice, faith, and benevolence?” Thus, 
while Socrates, one of the greatest and purest of human 
souls, a man who has attained to many worthy concep- 
tions of God, hidden from his idolatrous countrymen, 
is constrained to sacrifice a cock to Esculapius, the 
uneducated Jesus lives and dies superior to every 
superstition of his time; believing nothing because it 
is believed, respecting nothing because it is sanctified 
by custom and by human observance. Even in the 
closing scene of his life, we see his learned and priestly 
assailants refusing to go into the judgment-hall of 
Caiaphas, lest they should be ceremonially defiled and 
disqualified for the feast; though detained by no scru- 
ple at all as regards tke instigation of a murder! 
While he, on the other hand, pitying their delusions, 
prays for them from his cross — “ Father, forgive them, 
for they know not what they do.” 

And yet Christ is no liberal, never takes the ground 


HE IS NO LIBERALIST 299 


or boasts the distinction of a liberal among his country- 
men, because it is not a part of his infirmity, in discov- 
ering an error here, to fly to an excess there. His 
ground is charity, not liberality ; and the two are as 
wide apart in their practical implications, as adhering 
to all truth and being loose in all. Charity holds fast 
the minutest atoms of truth, as being precious and 
divine, offended by even so much as a thought of 
laxity. Liberality loosens the terms of truth; per- 
mitting easily and with careless magnanimity variations 
from it ; consenting, as it were, in its own sovereignty, 
to overlook or allow them; and subsiding thus, ere 
long, into a licentious indifference to all truth, and a 
general defect of responsibility in regard to it. Charity 
extends allowance to men; liberality, to falsities them- 
selves. Charity takes the truth to be sacred and im- 
movable; liberality allows it to be marred and maimed 
at pleasure. How different the manner of Jesus in 
this respect from that unreverent, feeble laxity, that 
lets the errors be as good as the truths, and takes it for 
a sign of intellectual eminence, that one can be floated 
comfortably in the abysses of liberalism. “Judge not,” 
he says, in holy charity, “that ye be not judged;” and 
again, in holy exactness, “ whosoever shall break, or 
teach to break, one of these least commandments, shall 
be least in the kingdom of God;” in the same way, “ he 
that is not with us, is against us ;” and again, “ he that 
is not against us, is for us;” in the same way also, “ye 
tithe mint, anise, and cummin;” and again, “these 
things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the 
other undone ;” once more, too, in the same way, “ he 
that is without sin, let him cast the first stone ;” and 
again, “go, and sin no more.” So magnificent and sub- 
lime, so plainly divine, is the balance of Jesus. Noth- 


300 HIS SIMPLICITY IS PERFECT 


ing throws him off the center on which truth rests; no 
prejudice, no opposition, no attempt to right a mistake, 
or rectify a delusion, or reform a practice. If this be 
human, I do not know, for one, what it is to be human. 

Again, it is a remarkable and even superhuman dis- 
tinction of Jesus, that, while he is advancing doctrines 
so far transcending all deductions of philosophy, and 
opening mysteries that defy all human powers of expli- 
cation, he is yet able to set his teachings in a form of 
simplicity, that accommodates all classes of minds. 
And this, for the reason that he speaks directly to men’s 
convictions themselves, without and apart from any 
learned and curious elaboration, such as the unculti- 
vated can not follow. No one of the great writers of 
antiquity had even propounded, as yet, a doctrine of 
virtue which the multitude could understand. It was 
taught as being ro «anor, [the fair,] or ro mpezrov, [the 
becoming, ] or something of that nature, as distant from 
all their apprehensions, and as destitute of motive 
power, as if it were a doctrine of mineralogy. Con- 
sidered as a gift to the world at large, it was the 
gift of a stone, not of bread. But Jesus tells them 
directly, in a manner level to their understanding, what 
they want, what they must do and be, to inherit eternal 
life, and their inmost convictions answer to his words. 
Besides, his doctrine is not so much a doctrine as a 
biography, a personal power, a truth all motivity, a love 
walking the earth in the proximity of a mortal fellow- 
ship. He only speaks what goes forth as a feeling and 
a power in his life, breathing into all hearts. To be 
capable of his doctrine, only requires that the hearer be 
a human creature, wanting to know the truth. 

Call him then, who will, a man, a human teacher ; 
what human teacher ever came down thus upon the 


HE IS INTELLIGIBLE 301 


soul of the race, as a beam of light from the skies — 
pure light, shining directly into the visual orb of the 
mind, a light for all that live, a full transparent day, in 
which truth bathes the spirit as an element. Others 
talk and speculate about truth, and those who can may 
follow ; but Jesus is the truth, and lives it, and, if he is 
a mere human teacher, he is the first who was ever able 
to find a form for truth, at all adequate to the world’s 
uses. And yet the truths he teaches outreach all the 
doctrines of all the philosophers of the world. He excels 
them, a hundred fold more, in the scope and grandeur 
of his doctrine, than he does in his simplicity itself. 

Is this human or isit plainly divine? If you will see 
what is human, or what the wisdom of humanity would 
ordain, it is this — exactly what the subtle and accom- 
plished Celsus, the great adversary of Christianity in its 
original promulgation, alleges for one of his principal 
arguments against it. “Woolen manufacturers,” he 
says, “shoemakers, and curriers, the most uneducated 
and boorish of men are zealous advocates of this religion; 
men who can not open their mouths before the learned, 
and who only try to gain over the women and children 
in families.” 1 And again, what is only the same objec- 
tion, under a different form, assuming that religion, like 
a philosophy, must be for the learned, he says, “ He 
must be void of understanding, who can believe that 
Greeks and barbarians, in Asia, Europe, and Lybia — 
all nations to the ends of the earth — can unite in one 
and the same religious doctrine.” ? So also, Plato says, 
“it is not easy to find the Father and Creator of all ex- 
istence, and when he is found it is impossible to make 
him known to all.”? “But exactly this,” says Justin 


1 Neander’s Memorials of Christian Life, p. 19. 
2 Tb., p. 33. 3 Timeus. 


302 HIS MORALITY 


Martyr, “is what our Christ has effected by his power.” 
And Tertullian also, glorying in the simplicity of the 
gospel, as already proved to be a truly divine excel- 
lence, says, ‘‘ Every Christian artisan has found God, 
and points him out to thee, and, in fact, shows thee 
every thing which is sought for in God, although Plato 
maintains that the creator of the world is not easily 
found, and that, when he is found, he can not be made 
known to all.”! Here, then, we have Christ against 
Celsus, and Christ against Plato. These agree in assum- 
ing that we have a God, whom only the great can mount 
high enough in argument to know. Christ reveals a 
God whom the humblest artisan can teach, and all 
mankind embrace, with a faith that unifies them all. 
Again, the morality of Jesus has a practical superior- — 
ity to that of all human teachers, in the fact that it is 
not an artistic, or theoretically elaborated scheme, but 
one that is propounded in precepts that carry their own 
evidence, and are, in fact, great spiritual laws ordained 
by God, in the throne of religion. He did not draw 
long arguments to settle what the swnmum bonum is, 
and then produce a scheme of ethics to correspond. He 
did not go into the vexed question, what is the founda- 
tion of virtue? and hang a system upon his answer. 
Nothing falls into an artistic shape, as when Plato or 
Socrates asks what kind of action is beautiful action ? 
reducing the principles of morality to a form as difficult 
for the uncultivated, as the art of sculpture itself. Yet, 
Christ excels them all in the beauty of his precepts, 
without once appearing to consider their beauty. He 
simply comes forth telling us, from God, what to do, 
without deducing any thing in a critical way ; and yet, 
while nothing has ever yet been settled by the critics 
1 Neander’s Memorials of Christian Life, p. 19. 


IS NOT ARTISTIC 303 


and theorizing philosophers, that could stand fast and 
compel the assent of the race, even for a year, the mo- 
rality of Christ is about as firmly seated in the convic- 
tions of men, as the law of gravity in their bodies. 

He comes into the world full of all moral beauty, as 
God of physical; and as God was not obliged to set 
himself to a course of esthetic study, when he created 
the forms and landscapes of the world, so Christ comes 
to his rules, by no critical practice in words. He opens 
his lips, and the creative glory of his mind pours itself 
forth in living precepts — Do to others as ye would 
that others should do to you — Blessed are the peace- 
makers— Smitten upon one cheek, turn the other — 
Resist not evil—Forgive your enemies —Do good to 
them that hate you— Lend not, hoping to receive — 
Receive the truth as little children. Omitting all the 
deep spiritual doctrines he taught, and taking all the 
human teachers on their own ground, the ground of 
preceptive morality, they are seen at once to be meager 
and cold ; little artistic inventions, gleams of high con- 
ceptions caught by study, having about the same relation 
to the Christian morality, that a statue has to the flexi- 
bility, the self-active force, and flushing warmth of man, 
as he goes forth in the image of his Creator, to be the 
reflection of his beauty and the living instrument of 
his will. Indeed, it is the very distinction of Jesus 
that he teaches, not a verbal, but an original, vital, and 
divine morality. He does not dress up a moral picture 
and ask you to observe its beauty, he only tells you how 
to live; and the most beautiful characters the world 
has ever seen, have been those who received and lived 
his precepts without once conceiving their beauty. 

Once more it is a high distinction of Christ’s charac- 
ter, as seen in his teachings, that he is never anxious 


304 NEVER ANXIOUS FOR SUCCESS 


for the success of his doctrine. Fully conscious of the 
fact that the world is against him, scoffed at, despised, 
hated, alone too in his cause, and without partisans 
that have any public influence, no man has ever been 
able to detect in him the least anxiety for the final suc- 
cess of his doctrine. He is never jealous of contradic- 
tion. When his friends display their dullness and 
incapacity, or even when they forsake him, he is never 
ruffled or disturbed. He rests on his words, with a 
composure as majestic as if he were sitting on the 
circle of the heavens. Now the consciousness of truth, 
we are not about to deny, has an effect of this nature 
in every truly great mind. But when has it had an 
effect so complete? What human teacher, what great 
philosopher has not shown some traces of anxiety for 
his school, that indicated his weakness ; some pride in 
his friends, some dislike of his enemies, some traces of 
wounded ambition, when disputed or denied? But 
here is a lone man, a humble, uneducated man, never 
schooled into the elegant fiction of an assumed com- 
posure, or practiced in the conventional dignities of 
manners, and yet, finding all the world against him, 
the earth does not rest on its axle more firmly than he 
upon his doctrine. Questioned by Pilate what he 
means by truth, it is enough to answer — “ He that is 
of the truth heareth my voice.” If this be human, no 
other man of the race, we are sure, has ever dignified 
humanity by a like example. 

Such is Christ as a teacher. When has the world 
seen a phenomenon like this ; a lonely uninstructed 
youth, coming forth amid the moral darkness of Gali- 
lee, even more distinct from his age, and from every 
thing around him, than a Plato would be rising up 
alone in some wild tribe in Oregon, assuming thus a 


ead 


THE MORE FAMILIARLY KNOWN, 305 


position at the head of the world, and maintaining it, 
for eighteen centuries, by the pure self-evidence of 
his life and doctrine! Does he this by the force of 
mere human talent or genius? If so, it is time that 
we begin to look to genius for miracles; for there is 
really no greater miracle. 


There is yet one other and more inclusive distinction 
of the character of Jesus, which must not be omitted, 
and which sets him off more widely from all the mere 


_ men of the race, just because it raises a contrast which 


is, at once, total and experimental. Human characters 
are always reduced in their eminence, and the impres- 
sions of awe they have raised, by a closer and more 
complete acquaintance. Weakness and blemish are 
discovered by familiarity ; admiration lets in qualifiers; 
on approach, the halo dims a little. But it was not so 
with Christ. With his disciples, in closest terms of 
intercourse, for three whole years; their brother, friend, 
teacher, monitor, guest, fellow-traveler ; seen by them 


‘under all the conditions of public ministry, and private 


society, where the ambition of show, or the pride of 
power, or the ill-nature provoked by annoyance, or the 
vanity drawn out by confidence, would most certainly 
be reducing him to the criticism even of persons most 
unsophisticated, he is yet visibly raising their sense of 
his degree and quality ; becoming a greater wonder, 
and holier mystery, and gathering to his person feel- 
ings of reverence and awe, at once more general and 
more sacred. Familiarity operates a kind of apotheo- 
sis, and the man becomes divinity, in simply being 
known. At first, he is the Son of Mary and the Naz- 
arene carpenter. Next, he is heard speaking with 
authority, as contrasted even with the Scribes. Next, 


306 THE DEEPER THE REVERENCE 


he is conceived by some to be certainly Elias, or some 
one of the prophets, returned in power to the world. 
Peter takes him up, at that point, as being certainly the 
Christ, the great, mysterious Messiah; only not so great 
that he is not able to reprove him, when he begins to 
talk of being killed by his enemies ; protesting — “be 
it far from thee, Lord.” But the next we see of the 
once bold apostle, he is beckoning to another, at the 
table, to whisper the Lord and ask who it is that is 
going to betray him; unable himself to so much as 
invade the sacred ear of his Master with the audible 
and open question. Then, shortly after, when he 
comes out of the hall of Caiaphas, flushed and flurried 
with his threefold lie, and his base hypocrisy of curs- 
ing, what do we see but that, simply catching the great 
master’s eye, his heart breaks down, riven with insup- 
portable anguish, and is utterly dissolved in childish 
tears. And so it will be discovered in all the disciples, 
that Christ is more separated from them, and holds 
them in deeper awe, the closer he comes to them and 
the more perfectly they know him. The same too is 
true of his enemies. At first, they look on him only as 
some new fanatic that has come to turn the heads of 
the people. Next, they want to know whence he drew 
his opinions, and his singular accomplishments in the 
matter of public address ; not being, as all that knew . 
him testify, an educated man. Next, they send out a 
company to arrest him, and, when they hear him speak, 
they are so deeply impressed that they dare not do it, 
but go back, under a kind of invincible awe, testifying 
— ‘never man spake like this man.” Afterward, to 
break some fancied spell there may be in him, they 
hire one of his own friends to betray him; and even 
then, when they are come directly before him and hear 


IN WHICH HE IS HELD 307 


him speak, they are in such tremor of apprehension, 
lest he should suddenly annihilate them, that they reel 
incontinently backward and are pitched on the ground. 
Pilate trembles visibly before him, and the more be- 
eause of his silence and his wonderful submission. 
And then, when the fatal deed is done, what do we see 
but that the multitude, awed by some dread mystery in 
the person of the crucified, return home smiting on 
their breasts for anguish, in the sense of what their 
infatuated and guilty rage has done. 

The most conspicuous matter, therefore, in the history 
of Jesus, is, that what holds true, in all our experience 
of men, is inverted in him. He grows sacred, peculiar, 
wonderful, divine, as acquaintance reveals him. At 
first he is only a man, as the senses report him to be; 
. knowledge, observation, familiarity, raise him into the 
God-man. He grows pure and perfect, more than 
mortal in wisdom, a being enveloped in sacred mystery, 
a friend to be loved in awe—dies into awe, and a 
sorrow that contains the element of worship! And 
exactly this appears in the history, without any token 
of art, or even apparent consciousness that it does 
appear — appears because it is true. Probably no one 
of the evangelists ever so much as noticed this remark- 
able inversion of what holds good respecting men, in 
the life and character of Jesus. Is this character 
human, or is it plainly divine? 


We have now sketched some of the principal dis- 
tinctions of the superhuman character of Jesus. We 
have seen him unfolding as a flower, from the germ 
of a perfect youth; growing up to enter into great 
scenes and have his part in great trials; harmonious 
in all with himself and truth, a miracle of celestial 


308 SUCH A CHARACTER 


beauty. He is a Lamb in innocence, a God in dignity ; 
revealing an impenitent but faultless piety, such as 
no mortal ever attempted, such as to the highest of 
mortals is inherently impossible. He advances the 
most extravagant pretensions, without any show of 
conceit, or even seeming fault of modesty. He suffers 
without affectation of composure and without restraint 
of pride, suffers as no mortal sensibility can, and where, 
to mortal view, there was no reason for pain at all; 
giving us not only an example of gentleness and patience 
in all the small trials of life, but revealing the depths 
even of the passive virtues of God, in his agony and 
the patience of his suffering love. He undertakes also 
a plan, universal in extent, perpetual in time; viz., to 
unite all nations in a kingdom of righteousness under + 
God; laying his foundations in the hearts of the poor, 
as no great teacher had ever done before, and yet with- 
out creating ever a faction, or stirring one partisan 
feeling in his followers. In his teachings he is perfectly 
original, distinct from his age and from all ages; never 
warped by the expectation of his friends; always in 
a balance of truth, swayed by no excesses, running to 
no oppositions or extremes; clear of all superstition, 
and equally clear of all liberalism; presenting the 
highest doctrines in the lowest and simplest forms; 
establishing a pure, universal morality, never before 
established; and, with all his intense devotion to the 
truth, never anxious, perceptibly, for the success of his 
doctrine. Finally, to sum up all in one, he grows more 
great, and wise, and sacred, the more he is known — 
needs, in fact, to be known, to have his perfection seen. 
And this, we say, is Jesus, the Christ; manifestly not 
human, not of our world —some being who has burst 
into it, and is not of it. Call him for the present, that 


DID ACTUALLY EXIST 309 


“holy thing” and say, “by this we believe that thou 
camest from God.” 

Not to say that we are dissatisfied with this sketch, 
would be almost an irreverence, of itself, to the subject 
of it. Who can satisfy himself with any thing that 
he can say of Jesus Christ? We have seen, how many 
pictures of the sacred person of Jesus, by the first 
masters; but not one, among them all, that did not 
rebuke the weakness which could dare attempt an 
impossible subject. So of the character of Jesus. It is 
necessary, for the holy interest of truth, that we should 
explore it, as we are best able; but what are human 
thoughts and human conceptions, on a subject that 
dwarfs all thought and immediately outgrows whatever. 
is conceived. And yet, for the reason that we have 
failed, we seem also to have succeeded. For the more 
impossible it is found to be, to grasp the character and 
set it forth, the more clearly is it seen to be above our 
range —a miracle and a mystery. 


Two questions now remain which our argument 
requires to be answered. And the first is this— did 
any such character, as this we have been tracing, actu- 
ally exist ? Admitting that the character, whether it 
be fact or fiction, is such as we have seen it to be, it 
must inevitably follow, either that such a character 
actually lived, and was possible to be described, because 
it furnished the matter of the picture, itself; or else, 
that Jesus, being a merely human character as he lived, 
was adorned or set off in this manner, by the exaggera- 
tions of fancy, and fable, and wild tradition afterward. 
In the former alternative we have the insuperable diffi- 
culty of believing, that any so perfect and glorious 
character was ever attained to by a mortal. If Christ 


310 HE WAS AN ACTUALLY 


was a merely natural man, then was he under all the 
conditions privative, as regards the security of his vir- 
tue, that we have discovered in man. He was a new- 
created being, as such to be perfected in a character of 
steadfast holiness, only by the experiment of evil and 
redemption from it. We can believe any miracle, 
therefore, more easily than that Christ was a man, and 
yet a perfect character, such as here is given. In the 
latter alternative, we have four different writers, widely 
distinguished in their style and mental habit — inferior 
persons, all, as regards their accomplishments, and none 
of them remarkable for gifts of genius — contributing 
their parts, and coalescing thus in the representation of 
a character perfectly harmonious with itself and, withal, 
a character whose ideal no poet had been able to create, 
no philosopher, by the profoundest effort of thought, to 
conceive and set forth to the world. What is more, 
these four writers are, by the supposition, children all 
of credulity, retailing the absurd gossip and the fabulous 
stories of an age of marvels, and yet, by some accident, 
they are found to have conceived and sketched the only 
perfect character known to mankind. To believe this, 
requires a more credulous age than these writers ever 
saw. We fall back then upon our conclusion, and there 
we rest. Such was the real historic character of Jesus. 
Thus he lived, and the character is possible to be con- 
ceived, because it was actualized in a living example. 
The only solution is that which is given by Jesus him- 
self, when he says — “I came forth from the Father, 
and am come into the world.” 

The second question is this; whether this character 
is to be conceived as an actually existing, sinless charac- 
ter in the world? That it is, I maintain, because the 
character can no otherwise be accounted for in its 


SINLESS CHARACTER 311 


known excellences. How was it that a simple-minded 
peasant of Galilee was able to put himself in advance, 
in this manner, of all human teaching and excellence; 
unfolding a character so peculiar in its combinations, 
and so plainly impossible to any mere man of the race? 
Because his soul was filled with internal beauty and 
purity, having no spot, or stain, distorted by no obliquity 
of view or feeling, lapsing therefore into no eccentricity 
or deformity. We can make out no account of him so 
easy to believe, as that he was sinless; indeed, we can 
make no other account of him at all. He realized what 
are, humanly speaking, impossibilities; for his soul was 
warped and weakened by no human infirmities, doing 
all in a way of ease and naturalness, just because it is 
easy for clear waters to flow from a pure spring. To 
believe that Jesus got up these high conceptions artistic- 
ally, and then acted them, in spite of the conscious 
disturbance of his internal harmony, and the conscious 
clouding of his internal purity by sin, would involve a 
degree of credulity and a want of perception, as regards 
the laws of the soul and their necessary action under 
sin, so lamentable as to be a proper subject of pity. 
We could sooner believe all the fables of the Talmud. 

Besides, if Jesus was a sinner, he was conscious of sin 
as all sinners are, and therefore was a hypocrite in the 
whole fabric of his character ; realizing so much of 
divine beauty in it, maintaining the show of such un- 
faltering harmony and celestial grace, and doing all this 
with a mind confused and fouled by the affectations acted 
for true virtues! Such an example of successful hypoc- 
risy would be itself the greatest miracle ever heard of 
in the world. 

Furthermore, if Jesus was a sinner, then he was, of 
course, a fallen being ; down under the bondage, dis- 


312 SPECIFICATIONS AGAINST IT 


torted by the perversity of sin and its desolating effects, 
as men are. The root therefore of all his beauty is 
guilt. Evil has broken loose in him, he is held fast 
under evil. Bad thoughts are streaming through his 
soul in bad successions ; his tempers have lost their 
tune ; his affections have been touched by leprosy; 
remorse scowls upon his heart; his views have lost their 
balance and contracted obliquity ; in a word, he is 
fallen. Is it then such a being, one who has been 
touched, in this manner, by the demonic spell of evil — 
is it he that is unfolding such a character ? 

What then do our critics in the school of naturalism 
say of this character of Christ? Of course they are 
obliged to say many handsome and almost saintly things 
of it. Mr. Parker says of him, that —“ He unites in 
himself the sublimest precepts and divinest practices, 
thus more than realizing the dream of prophets and 
sages; rises free from all prejudice of his age, nation, or 
sect ; gives free range to the spirit of God, in his breast ; 
sets aside the law, sacred and true — honored as it was, 
its forms, its sacrifice, its temple, its priests ; puts away 
the doctors of the law, subtle, irrefragable, and pours 
out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as Heaven, 
and true as God.” 1 Again—as if to challenge for 
his doctrine, the distinction of a really superhuman 
excellence — “ Try him as we try other teachers. They 
deliver their word, find a few waiting for the consola- 
tion who accept the new tidings, follow the new method, 
and soon go beyond their teacher, though less mighty 
minds than he. Though humble men, we see what 
Socrates and Luther neversaw. But eighteen centuries 
have past, since the Sun of humanity rose so high in 
Jesus ; what man, what sect has mastered his thought, 

1 Discourses of Religion, p. 294. 


BY PARKER AND HENNEL . 313 


comprehended his method, and so fully applied it to 
life!” } ' 

Mr. Hennel, who writes in a colder mood, but has, on 
the whole, produced the ablest of all the arguments yet 
offered on this side, speaks more cautiously. He says 
— “Whilst no human character, in the history of the 
world, can be brought to mind, which, in proportion as 
it could be closely examined, did not present some 
defects, disqualifying it for being the emblem of moral 
perfection, we can rest, with least check or sense of 
incongruity, on the imperfectly known character of 
Jesus of Nazareth.” 2 

But the intimation here is that the character is not 
perfect ; it is only one in which the sense of perfection 
suffers “least check.” And where is the fault charged? 
Why, it is discovered that Jesus cursed a fig-tree, in 
which he is seen to be both angry and unreasonable. 
He denounced the Pharisees in terms of bitter animosity. 
He also drove the money-changers out of the temple 
with a scourge of rods, in which he is even betrayed 
into an act of physical violence. These and such like 
specks of fault are discovered, as they think, in the life 
of Jesus. So graceless in our conceit, have we of this 
age grown, that we can think it a point of scholarly 
dignity and reason to spot the only perfect beauty that 
has ever graced our world, with such discovered blem- 
ishes as these! As if sin could ever need to be made 
out against a real sinner, in this small way of special 
pleading ; or as if it were ever the way of sin to err in 
single particles or homeopathic quantities of wrong ! 
A more just sensibility would denounce this malignant 
style of criticism, as a heartless and really low-minded 
pleasure in letting down the honors of goodness. 


1 Discourses of Religion, p. 303. 2 Inquiry, p. 451. 


314 THE MANLIER OPINION 


In justice to Mr. Parker, it must be admitted that he 
does not actually charge these points of history as faults 
or blemishes in the character of Jesus. And yet, in 
justice also, it must be added that he does compose a 
section under the heading — “ The Negative Side, or the 
Limitations of Jesus,’ — where these, with other like 
matters, are thrown in by insinuation, as possible 
charges sometimes advanced by others. For himself, 
he alleges nothing positive, but that Jesus was under 
the popular delusion of his time, in respect to devils or 
demoniacal possessions, and that he was mistaken in 
some of his references to the Old Testament. What 
now is to be thought of such material, brought forward 
under such a heading, to flaw such a character! Is 
it sure that Christ was mistaken in his belief of the 
foul spirits? Is it certain that a sufficient mode of in- 
terpretation will not clear his references of mistake ? 
And so, when it is suggested, at second hand, that his 
invective is too fierce against the Pharisees, is there 
no.escape, but to acknowledge that, “considering his 
youth, it was a venial error”? Or, if there be no, 
charge but this, “at all affecting the moral and reli- 
gious character of Jesus,” should nota just reverence to 
one whose life is so nearly faultless, constrain us to look 
for some more favorable construction that takes the 
solitary blemish away? Is it true that invective is a 
necessary token of ill-nature? Are there no occasions 
where even holiness will be most forward in it? And 
when a single man stands out alone, facing a whole 
living order and caste, that rule the time — oppressors 
of the poor, hypocrites and pretenders in religion, cor- 
rupters of all truth and faith, under the names of learn- 
ing and religion —is the malediction, the woe, that he 
hurls against them, to be taken as a fault of violence 


OF MILTON 815 


and unregulated passion; or, considering what amount 
of force and public influence he dares to confront and 
set in deadly enmity against his person, is he rather to 
be accepted as God’s champion, in the honors of a great 
and genuinely heroic spirit ? 

Considering how fond the world is of invective, how 
ready to admire the rhetoric of sharp words, how many 
speakers study to excel in the fine art of excoriation, 
how many reformers are applauded in vehement attacks 
on character, and win a great repute of fearlessness, 
just because of their severity, when, in fact, there is 
nothing to fear—when possibly the subject is a dead 
man, not yet buried — it is really a most striking trib- 
ute to the more than human character of Jesus, that we 
are found to be so apprehensive respecting him in par- 
ticular, lest his plain, unstudied, unrhetorical severities 
on this or that occasion, may imply some possible 
defect, or “ venial error,” in him. Why this special sen- 
sibility to fault in him? save that, by his beautiful and 
perfect life, he has raised our conceptions so high as to 
make, what we might applaud in a man, a possible 
blemish in his divine excellence ? 

The glorious old reformer and blind poet of Puritan- 
ism —vindicator of a free commonwealth and a free, 
unprelatical religion — holds, in our view, a far worthier 
and manlier conception of what Christ does, in this 
example, and of what is due to all the usurpations of 
titled conceit and oppression in the world. With truly 
refreshing vehemence, he writes —‘“For in times of 
opposition, when against new heresies arising, or old 
corruptions to be reformed, this cool, impassionate mild- 
ness of positive wisdom is not enough to damp and 
astonish the proud resistance of carnal and false 
doctors, then (that I may have leave to soar awhile, as 


316 THE CHANGE, SUCH A CHARACTER 


the poets use) Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arm- 
ing in complete diamond, ascends his fiery chariot, 
drawn by two blazing meteors figured like beasts, but 
of a higher breed than any the zodiac yields, resembling 
those four which Ezekiel and St. John saw, the one 
visaged like a lion, to express power, high authority, 
and indignation, the other of man, to cast derision and 
scorn upon perverse and fraudulent seducers— with 
them the invincible warrior, Zeal, shaking loosely the 
slack reins, drives over the heads of scarlet prelates 
and such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising 
their stiff necks under his flaming wheels. Thus did 
the true prophets of old combat with the false; thus 
Christ, himself the fountain of meekness, found acri- 
mony enough to be still galling and vexing the prelat- 
ical Pharisees. But ye will say, these had immediate 
warrant from God to be thus bitter; and I say, so 
much the plainer is it found that there may be a sancti- 
fied bitterness against the enemies of the truth.” 

And what other conception had Christ himself of the 
meaning and import of his conduct in the matter in 
question? He felt a zeal within him, answering to 
Milton’s picture, which could not, must not, be re- 
pressed. He knew it would be blamed, or set in charge 
against him, by false critics and uncharitable doubters 
—and he said, “ The zeal of thy house hath eaten me 
up.” And still it was, when rightly viewed, only a 
necessary outburst of that indignant fire, which is 
kindled in the sweet bosom of innocence, by the inso- 
lence of hypocrisy and oppression. 

I conclude, then, (1) that Christ actually lived and 
bore the real character ascribed to him in the history. 
And (2) that he was a sinless character. How far off 


1 Apology for Smectymuus, Sect. L 


HAS MADE IN OUR WORLD, 317 


is he now from any possible classification in the genus 
humanity! Having reached this point, we are ready 
to pass, in the next chapter, to the Christian miracles, 
and show that Christ, being himself the greatest of 
all miracles, in his own person, did, in perfect consist- 
ency, and without creating any greater difficulty, work 
miracles. 


But before we drop a theme like this, let us note 
more distinctly the significance of this glorious advent, 
and have our congratulations in it. This one perfect 
character has come into our world, and lived in it ; fill- 
ing all the molds of action, all the terms of duty and 
love, with his own divine manners, works, and charities. 
All the conditions of our life are raised thus, by the 
meaning he has shown to be in them, and the grace he 
has put upon them. The world itself is changed, and 
is no more the same that it was; it has never been the 
same, since Jesus left it. The air is charged with 
heavenly odors, and a kind of celestial consciousness, 
a sense of other worlds, is wafted on us in its breath. 
Let the dark ages come, let society roll backward and 
churches perish in whole regions of the earth, let infi- 
delity deny, and, what is worse, let spurious piety dis- 
honor the truth; still there is a something here that 
was not, and a something that has immortality in it. 
Still our confidence remains unshaken, that Christ and 
his all-quickening life are in the world, as fixed elements, 
and will be to the end of time; for Christianity is not 
so much the advent of a better doctrine, as of a perfect 
character ; and how cana perfect character, once entered 
into life and history, be separated and finally expelled ? 
It were easier to untwist all the beams of light in the 
sky, separating and expunging one of the colors, than 


318 IS RADICAL AND FINAL 


to get the character of Jesus, which is the real gospel, 
out of the world. Look ye hither, meantime, all ye 
blinded and fallen of mankind, a better nature is among 
you, a pure heart, out of some pure world, is come into 
your prison, and walks it with you. Do you require of 
us to show who he is, and definitely to expound his per- 
son? We may not beable. Enough to know that he 
is not of us—some strange being out of nature and 
above it, whose name is Wonderful. Enough that sin 
has never touched his hallowed nature, and that he is 
a friend. In him dawns a hope — purity has not come 
into our world, except to purify. Behold the Lamb of 
God, that taketh away the sins of the world! Light 
breaks in, peace settles on the air, lo! the prison walls 
are giving way —rise, let us go. 


CHAPTER XI 
CHRIST PERFORMED MIRACLES 


Iv used to be the practice of theologians to cite the 
miracles of Christ as proofs of his doctrine, and even of 
the gospel history ; not observing that the conditions of 
the question are entirely changed since the days of the 
first witnesses. To the cotemporaries and attendants on 
the ministry of Jesus, he might well enough be approved 
of God, by miracles and signs ; for, being themselves 
eye-witnesses, they could easily be sure of the facts. 
But to those who saw them not, to us who have heard 
of them only by the report of history, they can never 
be cited as proofs, because the main thing to be settled, 
with us, is the verity of the facts themselves. The 
gospel history, instead of being attested to us by the 
miracles, has them rather as a heavy burden resting on 
its own credibility. Doubtless it is true that, if such a 
being as Christ were to come into the world, on such an 
errand as the gospel reports, we should look to see him 
verify his mission by miracles, and without the miracles 
we should suspect the authenticity of his pretensions. 
As far, therefore, as the miracles sort with the person 
of Christ and his mission, as set forth in his gospels, 
there is a harmony of parts in the history, that is one of 
the evidences of its truth. It is even a necessary evi- 
dence, yet scarcely a sufficient evidence by itself. We 
still require to be certified that the miracles reported 

319 


320 MODES OF DOUBT, OR DENIAL 


are facts. This done, Christianity, as a supernatural 
revelation of God, is established. Until then, the mira- 
cles are, it must be admitted, a subtraction from its 
rational evidence ; even though the subject matter of the 
history be incomplete, and so far wanting in rational 
evidence, without them. 

The ground taken against the Christian miracles, by 
Spinoza, in which he is followed by Mr. Parker, is this : 
that they dishonor God, as involving the opinion that 
his great revelation in nature is insufficient, and needs 
afterward to be amended, and that, in doing it by mira- 
cles, he is conceived to overturn his own laws, and break 
up the order of his work. 

Hume was an atheist, and, of course, had nothing to 
say of God, or the confusion of his plan. Assuming that 
we know nothing save by experience, he argued that we 
know by experience the fallibility of all testimony, and 
the uniformity of the laws of nature. Hence that no 
amount of testimony can justify our belief in a miracle ; 
for we have, and must have, a stronger faith in the uni- 
formity of the laws of nature, than we can have in any 
testimony. 

Assisted in this skeptical tendency by modern science, 
which has set the laws of nature, for the time, in such 
prominence, as to operate a real suppression of thought 
in the spiritual direction, Dr. Strauss assumes the in- 
credibility of miracles, without much care for the argu- 
ment, and bases on that assumption his deliberate and 
powerful assault upon the gospel history. 

Against these and similar modes of denial, which dis- 
tinguish the naturalistic tendencies of our time, we now 
undertake, assisted by the material already prepared, in 
the preceding chapters, to establish the fact of the Chris- 
tian miracles. Our argument will not prove every one 


MIRACLES DEFINED 321 


of them, or, in fact, any particular one ; for the question 
will still be open, for such as choose to engage in it, 
whether this, or that, or some of them, are not to be dis- 
credited for particular reasons, which display the mis- 
take or credulity of the narrators. We shall only show 
that Christ wrought miracles, which is the great peint 
in issue. 


Let us endeavor, then, first of atl, as a matter on 
which every thing depends, to settle what is to be 
understood by a miracle, or what a miracle is. 

We have raised a clear distinction already between 
nature and the supernatural ; viz., that nature is the 
chain of cause and effect — that coming to pass which 
1s determined by the laws of cause and effect in things. 
The supernatural is that which acts on the chain of 
cause and effect, from without the chain; not being 
caused in its action, but acting from itself, under no 
conditions of previous causality. The distinction of 
nature and the supernatural is the distinction, in fact, 
between propagations of causality and original causality, 
between things and powers. In this view, man, as a 
power, together with all created spirits, good and bad, 
is a supernatural being co-ordinate with God, in so far 
as he acts freely and morally. If he moves but a limb 
in his freedom, he acts on the lines of cause and effect 
in nature; and if, in moving that limb, he has com- 
mitted a murder, we blame him for it, and bring him 
to a felon’s punishment; simply because he was not 
caused to do the deed, by any efficient cause back of 
him, but did it of himself; or, as the common law has 
it, “ by malice aforethought.” 

But we do not call these free moral actions of man, 
miracles, because they are common, and because there is 


322 THREE ELEMENTS INCLUDED 


no attribute of wonder connected with them. What then 
is a miracle? It is a supernatural act, an act, that is, 
, which operates on the chain of cause and effect in nature, 
from without the chain, producing, in the sphere of the 
senses, some event that moves our wonder, and evinces 
the presence of a more than human power. Observe 
three points. (1) It is by some action upon, not in, the 
line of cause and effect ; (2) it is in the sphere of the 
senses, for, though the regeneration of a soul may require 
as great power as the raising of Lazarus, it is yet no 
proper miracle, because it is no sign to the senses; (3) it 
must be understood to evince a superhuman power, other- 
wise feats of jugglery and magic would be miracles. We 
commonly suppose, in miracles, a deifie power, though 
sometimes we refer them to a subordinate, angelic, or 
demoniacal power ; as when we speak of signs and lying 
wonders, that are wrought by no divine agency. The 
word miracle, which is a Latin diminutive, properly de- 
notes some limited or isolated fact, that we wonder at. 
It takes the diminutive form probably because it relates 
to something parceled off from the whole of nature, 
which, in that view, is small, or partial. The scripture 
uses several terms or names to denote such events, 
calling them “ signs,” “wonders,” ‘ powers”; and once, 
mapaoo€éa, translated “strange things.” 

To make our definition yet more exact, or to clear 
it yet farther of ambiguity, let us add the following 
negatives. 

1. A miracle is not, as our definition itself implies, 
any wonderful event developed under the laws of nature, 
or of natural causation. Some religious teachers have 
taken this ground, suggesting that nature was origi- 
nally planned, or performed, so as to bring out these 
particular surprises at the points where they occur. 


FOUR MISCONCEPTIONS CORRECTED 323 


Doubtless God’s original scheme, taken as a whole, was 
so planned, or preformed ; but that scheme included 
more than mere nature, viz., all supernatural agencies 
and events, and even his own works, or actions, in the 
higher, vaster field of the supernatural. But it is a very 
different thing to imagine that nature is every thing, 
and that the surprises are all developments of nature. 

2. A miracle is no event that transpires singly, or 
apart from system ; for the real system of God is not 
nature, as we have seen, but that vaster whole of gov- 
ernment and order, including spirits, of which nature 
is only a very subordinate and comparatively insignifi- 
cant member. In this higher view, a miracle is in such 
a sense part of the integral system of God, that it would 
be no perfect system without the miracle. Hence all 
that is said against miracles, as a disruption of order in 
God’s kingdom — therefore incredible and dishonorable 
to God — is without foundation. 

3. A miracle is no contradiction of our experience, 
It is only an event that exceeds the reach of our experi- 
ence. We have a certain experience of what is called 
nature and the order of nature. But what will be the 
effect, in the field of nature, when the supernatural 
order meets it, or streams into it, we can not tell ; our 
experience here is limited to the results or effects that 
may be wrought, by our own supernatural agency. 
What the supernatural divine, or angelic, or demonic 
agency may be able to do in it, we know not. There- 
fore, all that is alleged by Mr. Hume falls to the ground. 
It may be more difficult to believe, or more difficult to 
prove such facts, wrought by such agencies: but not 
because they are contrary, in any proper sense, to our 
experience. They are only more strange to our ex- 
perience. 


324 ADMISSIONS MADE 


4. A miracle is no suspension, or violation, of the 
laws of nature. Here is the point where the advocates 
of miracles have so fatally weakened their cause by too 
large a statement. The laws of nature are subordinated 
to miracles, but they are not suspended, or discontinued 
by them. If I raise my arm, I subordinate the law of 
gravity and produce a result against the force of gravity, 
but the law, or the force, is not discontinued. On the 
contrary it is acting still, at every moment, as uniformly 
as if it held the arm to its place. All the vital agencies 
maintain a chemistry of their own, that subordinates 
the laws of inorganic chemistry. Nothing is more fa- 
miliar to us, than the fact of a subordination of natural 
laws. Itis the great game of life, also, to conquer na- 
ture and make it what, of itself, by its own laws of cause 
and effect, it is not. We raised the supposition, on a 
former occasion, of another physical universe, separated 
from the existing universe, and placed beyond a gulf, - 
across which no one effect ever travels. If now that 
other universe were swung up side by side with this, it 
would instantly change all the action of this —not by 
suspending its laws, but by an action that subordinates 
and varies its action. So the realm of spirits is a realm 
that is permitted, or empowered, to come down upon 
this other, which is called nature, and play its activity 
upon it, according to the plan God has before adjusted; 
but this activity suspends no law, breaks no bond of 
system. Nature stands fast, with all her terms of cause 
and effect, as before, a constant quantity, interposed 
by God to be a medium between supernatural beings, 
in their relative actions. They are to have their exer- 
cise in it, and upon it, and so, by their activity, they are 
to make a moral acquaintance with each other; men 
with men, all created spirits with all, God with creatures, 


BY OPPOSERS OF MIRACLES "e25 


creatures with God; acquaintance also with the uses 
of laws by the wrongs they suffer, and with their own 
bad mind by seeing what wrongs they do — so by their 
whole experience to be trained, corrected, assimilated in 
love, and finished in holy virtue. There is no more a 
suspension of the laws of nature, when God acts, than 
when we do; for nature is, by her very laws, subjected 
to his and our uses, to be swayed, and modified, and 
made a sign-language, so to speak, of mutual acquaint- 
ance between us. 


By these four negatives, distinctly premised, we seem 
to have cleared the faith of miracles of all needless in- 
cumbrances, and, in that way, to have cut off the prin- 
cipal objections urged against their credibility. Before 
proceeding, however, to inquire after the more positive 
proofs of the Christian miracles, it may be well to glance 
at the positions taken, by some of the principal adyo- 
cates of naturalism, and especially to the admissions 
they are sometimes constrained to make. 

Thus it is conceded by Mr. Hennel that — “ It seems 
beyond the power of intellect to decide, a priori, whether 
a miraculous revelation, or instruction through nature 
alone, be more suitable to the character of God.” ! There 
is then no inherent absurdity in the supposition, that 
God, as the spring of scientific unity and order in his 
works, should yet perform miracles. Whatever doubts 
we suffer of their reality must be grounded in defects 
of historic evidence. This is a large concession. 

Coincidently with this, Mr. Parker admits, that “ there 
is no antecedent objection ” to miracles, if only they are 
wrought “in conformity with some law out of our 
reach.”2 And exactly this is true of all supernatural 


1 Inquiry, p. 96. 2 Discourses of Religion, pp. 269-70. 


326 ADMISSIONS MADE 


divine agency, as we have abundantly shown — only the 
laws of God’s supernatural agency are laws of reason, 
or such as respect his last end, and the best way of 
compassing that end; which laws are yet so stable and 
so exactly universal, that he will always do exactly the 
same things, in exactly the same circumstances or con- 
ditions. 

The admissions of Dr. Strauss are even more remark- 
able. We have already referred to his admission that 
one “kingdom in nature may intrench on another,” and 
that “human freedom” may, in this way, modify “nat- 
ural development.”! Ask the question, accordingly, 
wherein is it less credible that the freedom of God may 
do as much? and we have, as the necessary answer, 
what contains the whole doctrine of miracles. Doubt- 
less it will be added that man belongs to “the totality 
of things,” and that God does not; that man is in “the 
vast circle” of nature and natural laws, and that God 
is not. But the answer, we reply, is grounded in an 
assumption, as regards man, that is justified by no evi- 
dence, and is contradicted even by the evidence of con- 
sciousness. Man, as a being of free will, is no part of 
nature at all, no arc in the circle of nature. He belongs, 
we have abundantly shown, to a higher kingdom and 
order; having it for his prime distinction that he acts 
supernaturally, acts upon the circle of nature from with- 
out, and never as being determined by the causalities 
of nature. All the free intelligences of the universe 
are acting on the circle of nature, in this manner, and 
why then may not God himself? 

But we have another concession that is even more to 
our purpose. Adverting to the fact that the ancient 
peoples, especially of the East, begin at God, and see all 


1 Life of Jesus, Vol. I., p. 72. 


BY OPPOSERS OF MIRACLES 327 


changes take their spring in his immediate agency, while 
the moderns begin at things, and see all changes come 
to pass, under natural laws, he distinctly rejects the 
latter, as being, by itself, any complete and sufficient 
view of the subject. ‘It must be confessed,” he says, 
“on nearer investigation, that this modern explanation, 
although it does not exactly deny the existence of God, 
yet puts aside the idea of him, as the ancient view did 
the idea of the world. For this is, as it has often been 
well remarked, no longer a God and Creator, but a mere 
finite Artist, who acts immediately upon his work, only 
during its first production, and then leaves it to itself; 
who becomes excluded with his full energy from one 
particular sphere of existence.’’! 

There is, then, he admits, no validity in the modern 
opinion, which assumes that all things take place by 
force of second causes, and without an immediate divine 
agency. Indeed he explicitly acknowledges, on the next 
page, that “our idea of God requires an immediate, and 
our idea of the world a mediate, divine operation.” He 
only manages to quite take away the value of the admis- 
sion, by raising the question, how to combine, or settle 
the relative adjustment of the mediate and immediate 
operation, and by so conducting the process as to come 
out in the conclusion, that ‘God acts upon the world as 
a whole, immediately, but on each part, only by means 
of his action on every other part,” that is to say, “by 
the laws of nature.”” And so miracles are excluded. 

But there is a mistake here, first in his premises, and 
next in his conclusion. It is not true that our “idea of 
the world” requires us to hold the faith of a merely 
“mediate” action of God upon it. Exactly contrary to 
this, the idea of the world, taken as disordered by sin, 


1Life of Jesus, Vol. I., p. 72. 


328 ADMISSIONS MADE 


demands his immediate action. It is not only necessary, 
in order to realize the idea of God, or make room for his 
practical existence, that we conceive him to have some 
kind of immediate action, but the world, under its dis- 
orders, asks for it, and waits for the restoring grace of it. 
It is very true that if the world, as an organized frame 
of scientific order, under second causes, were in no way 
disturbed by our immediate action upon it, there would 
seem to be no demand or even place for an immediate 
operation of God. Why should the watchmaker turn 
the hands of his watch directly by the key, when he 
has made them to go mediately by the spring? But this 
is not any true statement of the question; the world is 
in no such state of primal and ideal order. Making due 
account of sin, as our philosophers, alas! never do, we 
have a condition that, for order’s sake, asks an interven- 
tion of God’s supernatural and powerful hand. The 
world, in fact, was made, to be unmade by sin, and 
become a state of unnature; made to want, thus, inter- 
ventions and immediate operations, to carry it on and 
bring it out, in the final realization of its perfected ends. 
Even as a watch, being no infallible machine, is sub- 
mitted to external action, by means of the regulator; 
and as, without a regulator prepared for the immediate 
touch of some hand, it would be no manageable or ser- 
viceable thing, so it is the particular merit of nature, 
that it is originally ordered to receive the touch of free- 
will forces from without; first of such as are human, 
and then, as the only sufficient power of conservation, 
of such as are divine. 

The error referred to, in the conclusion at which Dr. 
Strauss arrives in his analysis, is too obvious to require 
a particular refutation. Enough that any one but a 
mere words-man, will find some difficulty in conceiving 


BY OPPOSERS OF MIRACLES 329 


how God should act “ immediately on the whole” of the 
world, without acting immediately on some one, or all 
of the parts. Acting in, or upon some one wheel of a 
watch, the whole action of the watch will be affected ; 
so when every wheel is acted on; but what is that im- 
mediate action upon the whole of a watch, that does 
not immediately act on any one of the parts? Besides, 
the argument by whichall particular action is excluded, 
would require that God should never have begun to act 
immediately any where. Creation is thus philosophic- 
ally impossible. God, therefore, has had nothing to 
do, but to be chained to the wheel from eternity, acting 
immediately on some eternal whole that is self-existent 
as he; allowed to begin nothing, vary no part or parti- 
cle, held by a doom to his eternal totality. Is it this 
which “the idea of God” requires, this by which our 
idea of God is fulfilled ? 

On this particular question, however, of an immediate 
and a mediate divine agency, we are not disposed to 
spend a great deal of time. We strongly suspect there 
is a sophism in the question, much as if the inquiry 
were whether God, who isabove time, acts in this tense 
or the other? All that we can say with confidence on 
this subject, appears to be that, so far as we can see, it 
is necessary for ws, under conditions of time, to hold the 
two conceptions, of a nature set on foot in some past 
time, and a divine force, acting supernaturally upon it 
now, and that God so distributes his action or plan, as 
to give us what will thus accommodate our finite con- 
ditions. Nature, practically viewed and wholly apart 
from speculation, is a kind of third quantity between 
us and God, to be reciprocally acted on; so that we can 
see what we are doing toward him, and what he is 
doing toward us. It is words to the great life-talk of 


330 THE MEDIATE AND IMMEDIATE, 


duty, a medium of action and reaction that interprets 
to us the divine relationship in which we stand. Lay- 
ing hold of nature by her laws and causes, to build, pro- 
duce, possess, and also to frame a scientific knowledge, 
we get a footing and a basis of reaction for our freedom. 
If we descend into sin, we set the causes of nature in 
courses of retributive action, and this reveals what is in 
our sin. Then, as God will redeem us, we are able to 
see a force entered into nature, which is not nature’s 
force. One may be as truly a divine force as the other, 
but they are yet so ordered as to be relative forces to 
our apprehension, acting one upon, or into, the other. 
In all Christian experience, and in times of prayer, we 
get a divine help, entered into our state, which we ap- 
prehend distinctly, and with a conscious intelligence, 
as we could not, if all divine agency were homogeneous. 
But while we need, so manifestly, to think God’s agency 
in this manner, under a twofold distribution, it is by no 
means certain that he, from his height of eternity, clas- 
sifies his action, under our finite categories of tense and 
relative causality. It is very certain, as we have already 
shown, that nature is not, to him, the universal system. 
All his doings, whether past or present, mediate or im- 
mediate, rest in laws of reason, determined by his end, 
and it is in these, not in the physical laws magnified by 
science, that he beholds the real system of his universe. 
In this view, nature may be to him a kind of continuous 
creation, coalescing, as it flows from his will, in a com- 
mon stream with his supernatural action, and erystalliz- 
ing with it, in the unity of his end. Enough that, to ° 
us, a conception of his work is given, which better 
meets our finite conditions. Enough that we may call 
it natural and supernatural; cause and effect, and mira- 
cle; mediate and immediate; and that so, without any 


POSSIBLY A HUMAN DISTINCTION 331 


real error, we may have our human want accommodated. 
The twofold distinction is permitted as a practically 
valid form of thought, without which we could have no 
sense of relationship with God, under the experience of 
life; and, without which, nothing done by him, as prior 
to our sin, in the way of judicial arrangement, or poste- 
rior, in the way of recovery, could ever be intelligible. 

Having noted some of the admissions of the natural- 
izing teachers, we will now proceed to adduce some 
proofs of the Christian miracles; or rather to gather up 
the proofs already supplied, by the course of our argu- 
ment itself. 


1. We have seen that man himself acts supernatu- 
rally, in all his free accountable actions. That is, he acts 
upon the chain of cause and effect in nature, uncaused 
himself,in his action. Thisis no miracle, but itinvolves 
all the speculative difficulties encountered in miracles. 
These are nothing but acts, every way similar to ours, 
of God or superhuman agents, on the lines of causes in 
nature ; only different in effect or degree, as they are 
different beings from us. We have only to suppose 
that nature is, by her very laws, submitted to them as 
to us, and that is the end of all difficulty. We may 
wonder at their. manifestations, and not at our own; 
but our wonder alters nothing, creates no derangement 
of nature, any more than if we were so familiar with 
such doings, as to experience no wonder at all. If the 
sun darkens, or the earth shudders with Christ in his 
death, that sympathy of nature is just as appropriate 
for him, as it is for us that our skin should blush, or 
our eye distill its tears, when our guilt is upon us, or 
our repentances dissolve us. It is not cause and effect 
that blushes, or that weeps, but it is that cause and 


332 ARGUMENTS FOR 


effect are touched by sentiments which connect with 
our freedom. Nature blushes and weeps, because she 
was originally submitted, so far, to our freedom, or 
made to be touched by our actions ; but she could not 
even to eternity raise a blush, or a tear of contrition, if 
we did not command her. 

2. Consider how near the fact of sin, which is the 
act of a supernatural human agency, approaches to the 
rank of a miracle. Sin, as we have shown in a previous 
chapter, is the acting of a free being as he was not 
made to act; for, if it were the acting of a being under 
laws of cause and effect established by God, then it 
would be no sin. God made sin possible, just as he 
made all lying wonders possible, but he never made it 
a fact, never set any thing in his plan to harmonize 
with it. Therefore it enters the world as a forbidden 
fact, against every thing that God has ordained. And 
then what follows? A general disruption of every 
thing that belongs to the original paradisaic order of 
the creation. The soul itself begins, at the first mo- 
ment, to feel the terrible action of it, and becomes a 
crazed and disordered power. The crystal form of the 
spirit is broken, and it is become an opaque element, a 
living malformation. The conscience is battered and 
trampled in itsthrone. The successions of the thoughts 
are become disorderly and wild; the tempers are out 
of tune ; the passions kindle into guilty fires, and burn 
with a consuming heat; the imagination is a hell of 
painful, ugly phantoms; the body a diseased thing, 
scarred by deformity. Society is out of joint, and even 
the physical world itself, as we have shown, is marred 
in every part by abortions, deformities visible, and dis- 
cords audible, so as no more to represent the perfect 
beauty of its author. What devil now of confusion has 


MIRACLES 333 


thrown a magnificent creature, and a realm of glorious 
natural order, into so great confusion? Where are 
those sovereign laws of beauty and order which they 
tell us nothing can disturb? We care not to call sin a 
miracle. We only say that no one miracle, nor all 
miracles, ever heard of or reported, can be imagined 
to have wrought a thousandth part of the disturbance 
actually wrought by sin, the sin of mankind. Who- 
ever then has yielded to the really shallow dogma of 
rationalism, which teaches that cause and effect in 
nature must have their way, fulfilling causes of ideal 
harmony, and forever excluding the possibility of a 
miracle, need not go far to find a corrective. Let it be 
distinctly noted then — 

3. That what we call nature, and what the mere 
naturalists are so bold to assume can not be mended 
or altered by any interference of miracle, does in 
fact no longer exist. Sin has so far unmade the world 
that the divine order is broken. The laws are all in 
action as at the first, mever discontinued, or anni- 
hilated, but the false fact or lying wonder of sin, has 
made false conjunctions of causes, and set the currents 
of causality in a kind of malign activity, which dis- 
places forever the proper order of nature. It is with 
nature as with a watch in which some wheel has been 
made eccentric, in its motions, by abuse. The whole 
machine is in disorder, though no one part is wanting. 
It is no longer a watch, or time-keeper, but a jumble of 
useless and absurd motions. So nature, under sin, is 
no longer nature, but a condition of unnature. Yet 
this it is that our scientific naturalism assumes to be 
the perfect order; which not even God may touch by 
a miracle, without a breach of its integrity! It is 
nature, they say, and God, who is the God of nature, 


334 ARGUMENTS FOR 


will not, can not touch it, without either consenting to 
its original imperfection, or producing a general wreck 
of its perfection. Why, the perfection of it is gone 
long ages ago! From the moment, when a substance 
or power located in it, viz., man, began to act as he was 
not made to act, that is to sin, it has been a disordered 
fabric of necessity. No longer does it represent only 
the beautiful mind of its author, but quite as often the 
shame, and discord, and deformity consequent upon sin. 
And no man, we are sure, who regards it for a moment, 
will have any the least apprehension that a miracle 
wrought in it, by its author, can be any thing but a 
hopeful sign for its systematic integrity. That he 
would never work a miracle in nature proper, as it 
came from his hands, we are quite willing to admit, but 
since nature is gone, fallen with man in the bad experi- 
ment of evil, and since it was originally designed to be 
acted on, both by man and by himself, in a process of 
training that carries him through a fall, and brings him 
out in redemption, we see nothing to discourage the 
faith of miracles, but much to prove the contrary. This 
brings us to speak — 

4. Of the fact that, without a putting forth of the 
divine power, in some action sovereign as miracle, 
there can be no reconstruction of the proper order of 
nature, no recovery of the broken state of man. The 
laws of nature, without him and within, are now run- 
ning perversely, as laws of sin and death. The erystal- 
line order of souls and of the world is broken, and it is 
plain, at a glance, that no being but God, the Almighty, 
can avail to restore the disturbance. The laws have 
no power of self-rectification, any more than the laws 
of a disordered machine have power to cure the disorder 
by running. As certainly therefore as sinners are to 


MIRACLES Bde 


be restored, as certainly, that is, as that all God’s ends 
in the world and human existence are not to fail, 
there will be, must be, miracles, or puttings forth, at 
least, of a divinely supernatural power. Every thing 
in the whole creation is groaning and travailing in 
expectation of so great a redemption. The very plan 
was originally, as we have shown, to bring out the 
grand results of spiritual order and character intended, 
by means of a double administration; that is by the 
creation and the new-creation, the creation disordered 
by sin, the new-creation raised up and glorified by grace 
and its miracles. Go back then a moment — 

5. To things precedent and see what considerations 
and facts may be gathered there. First, we discover, 
what the naturalists and men chiefly occupied with 
matters of science so generally overlook, the fact that 
nature never was, and never was designed to be, the 
whole empire of God; that the final ends of God 
are not contained in nature at all, and that it was 
appointed by him to be only a means to his ends, a 
mere field for the training of his children. In this 
view spiritual creatures, creatures supernatural, com- 
pose the real body and substance of his empire, and to 
these nature was to be subjected, by these to be played 
upon in the great life-battle of their trial — disordered 
by them and restored by himself. Accordingly it is 
not implied that the divine system is, in any degree, 
marred or broken by his miracles. On the contrary, 
every thing done by him will be done as fulfilling that 
system. There is no change, no reconsideration, no 
breach of unity, but a doing of precisely that which 
was set down to be done at the first. He proceeds, 
in fact, by laws predetermined, in his miracles them- 
selves; of course by a perfect and orderly system. 


J6 ARGUMENTS FOR 


Observe, again, the fact that God has either never 
done or can do any thing, or else that he may as well 
be supposed to do a miracle now. To create any thing 
that was not, to set any plan on foot that was not on 
foot, was itself a miracle that involved all the difficul- 
ties of a miracle subsequent. To create ascheme called 
nature, and retire to see it run, is itself a miracle, and 
we may just as well suppose that he continues to work, 
as that he so began. He has either never done any 
thing, or else he may do something now. There is no 
way to escape the faith of miracles and hold the faith 
of a personal God and Creator. It is only pantheism, 
or, what is not far different, atheism, that can rationally 
- and consistently maintain the impossibility of miracles. 
Any religion too absolute to allow the faith of miracles, 
is a religion whose God never did any thing, and is 
therefore no God. 

Again, it is discovered and proved, by science itself, 
that God has performed, at least one miracle, or class 
of miracles, in the world, previous to the date of human 
existence. We speak of the great geological discovery 
that new races of animals and plants have, at different 
times, been created, and finally man himself. The mere 
metallic earth, which, at one time, was the all of nature, 
did not make or sprout up into any form of life. That 
would be a greater miracle, done by nature, than the 
raising of Lazarus—as great as if the earth had raised 
him, yea, as great as if the earth had invented and 
shaped him, andl breathed intelligence into him. Here 
then is proved to us, out of She. infallible registers of 
the rocks, that God has sometime wrought a miracle 
upon nature. And, as we said just now, one miracle 
proved, decides the question; for there may as well be 
a thousand as one. We pass now — 


MIRACLES 337 


6. To the subject. of our last chapter, where we meet 
a proof that concludes all argument. We there showed, 
by a full and critical examination of the character of 
Jesus, that he is plainly not a human character, and can 
not be rightly classed in the genus humanity; also, that 
the character is not an invention, but that such a person 
must have lived, else he could not be described; also, 
that being such, in external description, he must have 
been, what he himself claimed to be, a sinless being. 
Here, then, is a being who has broken into the world, 
and is not of it; one who has come out from God, and 
is even an expression to us of the complete beauty of 
God — such as he should be, if he actually was what he 
is affirmed to be, the Eternal Word of the Father incar- 
nate. Did he work miracles? this now is the question 
that waits for our decision—did he work miracles? 
By the supposition, he is superhuman. By the supposi- 
tion, too, he is in the world as a miracle. Agreeing 
that the laws of nature will not be suspended, any more 
than they are by our own supernatural action, will they 
yet be so subordinated to his power, as to permit the 
performance of signs and wonders, in which we may 
recognize a superhuman force? Since he is shown to 
be a superhuman being, manifestly nature will have a 
relation to him, under and by her own laws, such as 
accords with his superhuman quality, and it will be 
very singular if he does not do superhuman things; 
nay, it is even philosophically incredible that he should 
not. An organ isa certain instrument, curiously framed 
or adjusted in its parts, and prepared to yield itself to 
any force which touches the keys. An animal runs back 
and forth across the key-board, and produces a jarring, 
disagreeable jumble of sounds. Thereupon he begins 
to reason, and convinces himself that it is the nature of 


338 THE GRAND ARGUMENT, 


the instrument to make such sounds, and no other. 
But a skillful player comes to the instrument, as a 
higher presence, endowed with a super-animal sense 
and skill. He strikes the keys, and all melodious and 
heavenly sounds roll out upon the enchanted air. Will 
the animal now go on to reason that this is impossible, 
incredible, because it violates the nature of the instru- 
ment, and is contrary. to his own experience? Perhaps 
he may, and men may sometimes not be wiser than he. 
But the player himself, and all that can think it possible 
for him to do what the animal can not, will have no 
doubt that the music is made by the same laws that 
made the jargon. Just so Christ, to whose will or 
touch our mundane system is pliant as to ours, may be 
able to execute results through its very laws, subordi- 
nated to him, which to us are impossible. Nay, it would 
be itself a contradiction of all order and fit relation, if 
he could not. To suppose that a being out of humanity 
will be shut up within all the limitations of humanity, 
is incredible and contrary to reason. The very laws of 
nature themselves, having him present to them, as a 
new agent and higher first term, would require the 
development of new consequences and incidents in the 
nature of wonders. Being a miracle himself, it would 
be the greatest of all miracles if he did not work 
miracles. 

Let it be farther noted, as a consideration important 
to the argument, that Christ is here on an errand high 
enough to justify his appearing, and also of a nature 
to exclude any suspicion that he is going to overthrow 
the order of God’s works. He declares that he has 
come out from God, to be a restorer of sin, a regenera- 
tor of all things, a new moral creator of the world; 
thus to do a work that is, at once, the hope of all 


THAT CHRIST IS A MIRACLE 339 


order, and the greatest of all miracles. Were he sim- 
ply juggling with our curiosity, in the performance of 
idle and useless wonders, doing it for money, or to show 
what is of no consequence; as that he is a priest, or has 
the power of second sight, or that the sun shines, or 
that he is right in asserting some insignificant opinion, 
it is allowed that we should have no right to believe 
in him. But he tells us, on the contrary, that he is 
come out from God, to set up the kingdom of God, and 
fulfill the highest ends of the divine goodness in the 
creation of the world itself; and the dignity of his 
work, certified by the dignity also of his character, 
sets all things in proportion, and commends him to 
our confidence in all the wonders he performs. 

But our human supernatural action, it will be sug- 
gested, is through the body, while the raising of 
Lazarus dispenses with all natural media and instru- 
ments. And yet, as our body is a part of nature, it 
will be seen that we act upon the body as being itself 
nature, without media between it and our will, in the 
same manner. The relationship existing between dif- 
ferent orders of being and nature may also vary accord- 
ing to their degree. On this subject we know nothing. 
We can not even say, that, to such a being as Christ in- 
carnate in it, the whole realm of physical existence was 
not present as a sensorium, quickened by his life. Mere 
ignorance is not competent here to hold an objection. 
If we can not see how Christ could work his miracles, 
or send his will into things around him, there is noth- 
ing singular in the fact. There are many things that 
we can not understand. 

Nor shall we apprehend in his miracles any disrup- 
tion of law; for we shall see that he is executing that 
true system, above nature and more comprehensive, 


340 AND OUGHT THEREFORE, 


which is itself the basis of all stability, and contains 
the real import of all things. Dwelling from eternity 
in this higher system himself, and having it centered in 
his person wheeling and subordinating thus all physical 
instruments as doubtless he may, to serve those better 
ends in which all order lies, it will not be in us, when 
he comes forth from the Father, on the Father’s errand, 
to forbid that he shall work in the prerogatives of the 
Father. Visibly not one of us, but a visitant who has 
come out from a realm of spiritual majesty, back of the 
sensuous orb on which our moth-eyes dwell as in con- 
genial dimness and obscurity of light, what shall we 
think when we see diseases fly before him, and blind- 
ness letting fall the scales of obscured vision, and death 
retreating from its prey, but that the seeming disrup- 
tion of our retributive state under sin, is made to let 
in mercy and order from above? For, if man has buried 
himself in sense, and married all sense to sin, which sin 
is itself the soul of all disorder, can it be to us a fright- 
ful thing that he lays his hand upon the perverted cau- 
salities, and says, “thou art made whole”? If the bad 
empire, the bitter unnature, of our sin, is somewhere 
touched by his healing power, must we apprehend some 
fatal shock of disorder? If, by his miraculous force, 
some crevice is made in the senses, to let in the light 
of heaven’s peace and order, must we tremble lest the 
scientific laws are shaken, and the scientific causes vio- 
lated? Better is it to say —“ this beginning of mira- 
cles did Jesus make in Galilee, and manifested forth his 
glory, and we believe in him.” Glory breaks in through 
his incarnate person, to chase away the darkness. In 
him, peace and order descend to rebuild the realm 
below, they have maintained above. Sin, the damned 
miracle and misery of the groaning creation, yields to 


TO WORK MIRACLES 341 


the stronger miracle of Jesus and his works, and the 
great good minds of this and the upper worlds behold 
integrity and rest returning, and the peace of uni- 
versal empire secure. Out of the disorder that was, 
rises order; out of chaos, beauty. Amen! Alleluia! 
for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth! 

Once more, it is a powerful evidence for the historic 
verity of the Christian miracles, that their deniers can 
make no account of them, as reported in the Christian 
narratives, which is rational or even credible. Dr. 
Strauss maintains that they are myths or legendary 
tales, that grew up out of the story-telling and marvel- 
ing habit of the disciples of Christ, within the first 
thirty years after their Master’s death, at which time 
many of the eye-witnesses of the miracles were still 
living. That such a conversion of history into fable 
should have taken place in the traditions of a much 
longer period of time, is not impossible. But he is 
compelled to shorten his time in this manner, as it 
would seem, because there is no allusion made in the 
gospels to the fall of Jerusalem as an accomplished 
fact. For, had they been written after the overthrow 
by Titus, it is inconceivable that his name should not 
have been mentioned in those chapters of the gospels 
that foretell the overthrow, and also that the shocking 
scenes of the siege should not have been even too dis- 
tinctly described. On the supposition, too, that the 
first age of discipleship was fertile enough, in the 
mythical tendency, to have generated so many miracu- 
lous stories, within the short period of thirty years, 
this grand catastrophe of the nation must have been 
set off with a profuse garnish of fictions, and Christ 
himself, coming in the clouds of heaven to be the 
avenger of the cross, must have had such prominence 


342 NO OTHER ACCOUNT 


in the transaction, as to quite leave the Roman com- 
mander in the shade. Hence the necessity that so 
short a time should be fixed. And thus we are re- 
quired to believe that all these myths were developed 
and recorded in the lifetime of the eye-witnesses of 
Christ’s ministry, and some of them recorded by eye- 
witnesses themselves. The faith of miracles, we think, 
would be somewhat easier than this. And still the dif- 
ficulty is farther increased by the fact that the epistles, 
the genuineness of which is indisputable, present exactly 
the same Christ, and refer to the same miracles, in a 
manner clear of all pretense of myth or extravagance. 

But the mythologic hypothesis of this critic breaks 
down more fatally, if possible, in the necessary implica- 
tion, that four common men are able to preserve such 
a character as that of Christ, while loading down the 
history thus, with so many mythical wonders that are 
the garb of their very grotesque and childish credulity. 
By what accident, we are compelled to ask, was an age 
of myths and fables able to develop and set forth the 
only conception of a perfect character ever known in 
our world? Were these four mythologic dreamers, 
believing their own dreams and all others beside, the 
men to produce the perfect character of Jesus and a 
system of teachings that transcend all other teachings 
ever given to the race? If there be a greater miracle, 
or a tax on human credulity more severe, we know not 
where it is. Nothing is so difficult, all human litera- 
ture testifies, as to draw a character, and keep it in its 
living proportions. How much more to draw a perfect 
character, and not discolor it fatally by marks from the 
imperfection of the biographer. How is it, then, that 
four humble men, in an age of marvels and Rabbinical 
exaggerations, have done it—done what none, not even 


OF THE MIRACLES 343 


the wisest and greatest of mankind, have ever been able 
to do? 

So far, even Mr. Parker concedes the right of my 
argument. ‘ Measure,” he says, ‘‘ the religious doctrine 
of Jesus by that of the time and place he lived in, or 
that of any time and any place. Yes, by the doctrine 
of eternal truth. Consider what a work his words and 
deeds have wrought in the world. Remember that the 
greatest minds have seen no farther, and added nothing 
to the doctrine of religion; that the richest hearts 
have felt no deeper, and added nothing to the sentiment 
of religion; have set no loftier aim, no truer method 
than his, of perfect love to God and man. Measure 
him by the shadow he has cast into the world — no, by 
the light he has shed upon it. Shall we be told such a 
man never lived ? the whole story is a lie? Suppose 
that Plato and Newton never lived. But who did their 
wonders, and thought their thought? It takes a 
Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have 
fabricated a Jesus? None but a Jesus.” 4 

Exactly so. And yet, inthe middle of the very para- 
graph from which these words are gleaned, Mr. Parker 
says, ‘“‘ We can learn few facts about Jesus ;” also, that 
in certain things —to wit, his miracles, we suppose — 
“Hercules was his equal, and Vishnu his superior.” 
Few facts about Jesus! all the miracles recited of him, 
as destitute of credibility as the stories of Hercules and 
Vishnu! And yet these evangelists, retailing so many 
absurd fictions and so much childish gossip, have been 
able to give us a doctrine upon which the world has 
never advanced, a character so deep that the richest 
hearts have felt nothing deeper, and added nothing to 
the sentiment of it. They have done, that is, the 


1Life of Jesus, p. 363. 


344 IS TENABLE 


difficult thing, and broken down under the easy! pre- 
served, in the life and discourses of Jesus, what exceeds 
all human philosophy, all mortal beauty, and yet have 
not been able to recite the simplest facts! Is it so that 
any intelligent critic will reason? Suppose, if it please, 
that they are not infallible in their narrative, for we 
have not proved them to be. Still, as we would trust 
a carrier who has brought us a case of the rarest 
diamonds, set in the frailest and most delicate tissues, 
proving at once his capacity and his honest fidelity to 
his trust, so much more will we trust these simple men, 
who have given us the perfect life of Jesus, discolored 
by no stain from their own fond prejudices and weaker 
infirmities. Nor, if this carrier may have once stumbled 
at our door, when bringing us some bundle of meaner 
consequence, do we set him down, after bringing us the 
casket safely, as one who is unreliable in these common 
errands. No more can we set down our evangelists, as 
unreliable in matters of fact, after they have brought 
us the glorious, self-evidencing character of Jesus, even 
though, to suppose the worst, they should be suspected, 
once or twice, of mistake, in the external facts of his 
ministry. But there are objections to be considered. 


First objection. That if the miracles of Christ are to 
be believed, why not those also of Hercules and Vishnu, 
and the ecclesiastical miracles of the Papal church ? 
Undoubtedly they must be, if they are wrought by such 
a character as Jesus, engaged in such a work. But it 
is rather too much to insist that, because we take good 
money, we ought therefore in consistency to take coun- 
terfeit money. If it be said that the Popish miracles 
are as well attested as those of Jesus, we have made 
nothing at all, let it be observed, of the mere testimony 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 845 


of witnesses. We have proved the witnesses by that 
which stands in glorious self-evidence before us, and 
not the miracles by the mere testimony of the witnesses. 
We will believe the miracles also of Hercules, when 
Hercules is seen, by the holy beauty of his perfect char- 
acter, to have certainly come out from God. So, too, 
we might well enough agree to believe the miracles of 
the apocryphal gospels, that, for example, of the Infancy 
of Jesus, could the writer only manage to give us the - 
character of that infancy, without reducing it to a 
disgusting picture of pettishness and passion. Until 
then, we must discover, in what is called his gospel, 
how certain it is that the pen which gives us only 
myths and marvels, for the facts of a perfect history, 
will give us, for a perfect character, what is wilder still 
and more absurd. 

Second objection. ‘That, according to our definition, 
there may be false miracles. That is certainly the doc- 
trine of scripture. Neither is there any thing essentially 
incredible in it. They are wrought, of course, by no 
concurrence of divine power, but only by such power 
as belongs to the grade of the spirit by whom they are 
wrought — by “him whose coming is with signs and 
lying wonders,” “by the spirits of devils, working 
miracles.” According to our definition, any invisible 
spirit, who can do what is superhuman, can do a miracle. 
That there are invisible spirits, we have no doubt, and 
what kind of access they may have to nature, in what 
manner qualified or restrained, we do not know. But 
it will never be difficult to distinguish their prodigies 
and freaks of mischief from any divine operation. 
Their character will be evident in their works, and no 
one that loves the divine truth will ever be taken by 
their impostures. We express no opinion of the utter- 


346 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


ances and other demonstrations which many are accept- 
ing in our times, as the effusions of spirits— they are 
beyond our range of acquaintance. We say that if 
these things are really done, or communicated, by spirits, 
then they are miracles, bad miracles, of course; and 
thus we have it established as a curious phenomenon, 
that the men who are boasting their rejection of all 
divine miracles, are themselves deepest in the faith of 
those which are wrought by demons. Nor is it impos- 
sible that God has suffered this late irruption of lying 
spirits, to be at once the punishment and the rectifica- 
tion of that shallow unbelief which distinguishes our 
age —thus to shame the absurd folly of what is here 
called science, and bring us back to a true faith in the 
spiritual realities and powers of a supernatural kingdom. 

Third objection. That if miracles are credible in 
any particular time or age, that, for example, of the 
New Testament, they must be now and always credible. 
To this we answer that they are now and always cred- 
ible. But it does not follow that they are now and 
alwaysafact. That must depend upon historic evidence. 
The scriptures nowhere teach, what is often assumed, the 
final discontinuance of miracles, and it is much to be re- 
gretted that such an assumption is so commonly made, 
for when it is taken for an authorized doctrine, that God 
will no more allow any real miracle to be wrought, since 
the apostolic times, it renders even the New Testament 
miracles just so much more difficult to be believed. 
There is no certain proof that miracles have not been 
wrought in every age of the Christian church. There 
is certainly a supernatural and divine causality stream- 
ing into the lives and blending with the faith of all good 
men, and there is no reason to doubt that it may some- 
times issue in premonitions, results of guidance and 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 347 


healing, endowments of force, answers to prayer that 
closely approach, in many cases, if they do not exactly 
meet, our definition of miracles. 

We answer again thatif miracles have been discontin- 
ued, even for a thousand years, they may yet be revived 
in such varieties of form, as a different age may require. 
They will be revived without fail, whenever the ancient 
reason may return, or any new contingency may occur, 
demanding their instrumentality. 

And yet, again, we answer that there may have been 
good and sufficient reasons why the more palpable mira- 
cles of the apostolic age could not be continued, or must 
needs be interspaced by agencies of a more silent char- 
acter. It may have been that they would by and by 
corrupt the impressions and ideas even of religion, setting 
men to look after signs and prodigies with their eyes, 
inducing a contempt of every thing else, and so, instead 
of attesting God to men, making them unspiritual and 
even incapable of faith. Traces of this mischief begin to 
appear even in the times of the apostles themselves. 
Therefore, when the fire is kindled, the smoke, it may 
be, ceases ; or rather it becomes transparent, so that we 
do not so readily see it, though itis there. Christianity, 
itis very obvious, inaugurates the faith of a supernatural 
agency in the world. It is either supernatural or it is 
a nullity. Hence, to inaugurate such a faith, it must 
needs make its entry into the world, through the fact 
of a divine incarnation and other miracles. In these 
we have the pole of thought, opposite to nature, set be- 
fore us in distinct exhibition. And then the problem 
is, having the two poles of nature and the supernatural 
presented, that we be trained to apprehend them con- 
junctively, or as working together in silent terms of 
order. For,if the miracles continue in their palpable 


348 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


and staring forms of wonder, and take their footing as 
a permanent institution, they will breed a sensuous, 
desultory state of mind, opposite to all sobriety and all 
genuine intelligence. The invalid will now pray to be 
healed by pure miracle, and will never learn or be taught 
how to pray, in a manner that contemplates a unifying 
of the supernatural force with nature and the system of 
natural causes. At a certain point the miracles were 
needed as the polar signs of a new force, but, for the 
reason suggested, it appears to be necessary, also, that 
they should not be continuous ; otherwise the super- 
natural will never be thought into any terms of order, as 
a force conjoined with nature in our common experience, 
but will only instigate a wild, eccentric temper, closely 
akin to unreason, and to all practical delusion. And yet 
there may be times, even to the end of the world, when 
some outburst of the miraculous force of God will be 
needed to break up a lethargy of unbelief and sensuous 
dullness, equally unreasoning and delusory. 

Fourth objection. That whatever may be true of 
miracles in other respects, they are only demonstra- 
tions of force; therefore, having in themselves no 
moral quality, there is no rational, or valuable, or even 
proper place for them in a gospel, considered as a new- 
creating grace for the world. To this we answer that 
it is a thing of no secondary importance for a sinner, 
down under sin, and held fast in its bitter terms of 
bondage, to see that God has entered into his case with 
a force that is adequate. These mighty works of Jesus, 
which have been done and duly certified, are fit ex- 
pressions to us of the fact that he can do for us all that 
we want. Doubtless it is a great and difficult thing to 
regenerate a fallen nature; no person, really awake to 
his miserable and dreadful bondage, ever thought other- 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 349 


wise. But he that touched the blind eyes and com- 
manded the leprosy away, he that trod the sea, and 
raised the dead, and burst the bars of death himself, 
can tame the passions, sweeten the bitter affections, 
regenerate the inbred diseases, and roll back all the 
storms of the mind. Assured in this manner by his 
miracles, they become arguments of trust, a storehouse 
of powerful images, that invigorate courage and stimu- 
late hope. Broken as we are by our sorrow, cast down 
as we are by our guiltiness, ashamed, and weak and 
ready to despair, we can yet venture a hope that our 
great soul-miracle may be done; that, if we can but 
touch the hem of Christ’s garment, a virtue will go out 
of him to heal us. In all dark days and darker strug- 
gles of the mind, in all outward disasters, and amid 
all storms upon the sea of life, we can yet descry him 
treading the billows and hear him saying, “It is I, be 
not afraid.” And lest we should believe the miracles 
faintly, for there is a busy infidel lurking always in our 
hearts to cheat us of our faith, when he can not reason 
it away, the character of Jesus is ever shining with and 
through them, in clear self-evidence, leaving them never 
to stand as raw wonders only of might, but covering 
them with glory, as tokens of a heavenly love, and acts 
that only suit the proportions of his personal greatness 
and majesty. 

There are many in our day, as we know, who, with- 
out making any speculative point of the objection we 
are discussing, have so far yielded to the current mis- 
belief as to profess, with a certain air of self-compliment, 
that they are quite content to accept the spirit of Jesus, 
and let the miracles go for what they are worth. Little 
figure will they make as Christians in that kind of 
gospel. They will not, in fact, receive the spirit of 


350 CHRIST THE TRUE EVIDENCE 


Jesus; for that unabridged is itself the Grand Miracle 
of Christianity, about which all the others play as scin- 
tillations only of the central fire. Still less will they 
believe that Jesus can do any thing in them which their 
sin requires. They will only compliment his beauty, 
imitate or ape his ways ina feeble lifting of themselves, 
but that he can roll back the currents of nature, loos- 
ened by the disorders of sin, and raise them to a new 
birth in holiness, they will not believe. No such watery 
gospel of imitation, separated from grace, will have any 
living power in their life, or set them in any bond of 
unity with God. Nothing but to say — “Jesus of Naz- 
‘areth, a man approved of God by miracles and signs 
which God did by him” — can draw the soul to faith 
and open it to the power of a supernatural and new- 
creative mercy. 

We come back, then, in closing, to the grand first 
principle of evidence, and there we rest. The character 
and doctrine of Jesus are the sun that holds all the 
minor orbs of revelation to their places, and pours a 
sovereign self-evidencing light into all religious knowl- 
edge. We have been debating much, and ranging over 
a wide field, in chase of the many phantoms of doubt 
and false argument, still we have not far to go for 
light, if only we could cease debating and sit down to 
see. It is no ingenious fetches of argument that we 
want; no external testimony, gathered here and there 
from the records of past ages, suffices to end our 
doubts; but it is the new sense opened in us by Jesus 
himself —a sense deeper than words and more im- 
mediate than inference—of the miraculous grandeur 
of his life; a glorious agreement felt between his works 
and his person, such that his miracles themselves are 
proved to us in our feeling, believed in by that inward 


IN HIM WE REST 351 


testimony. On this inward testimony we are willing 
to stake every thing, even the life that now is, and that 
which is to come. If the miracles, if revelation itself, 
can not stand upon the superhuman character of Jesus, 
then let it fall. If that character does not contain all 
truth and centralize all truth in itself, then let there be 
no truth. If there is any thing worthy of belief not 
found in this, we may well consent to live and die 
without it. Before this sovereign light, streaming 
out from God, the deep questions, and dark surmises, 
and doubts unresolved, which make a night so gloomy 
and terrible about us, hurry away to their native abyss. 
God, who commanded the light to shine out of dark- 
ness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ. This it is that has conquered the assaults of 
doubt and false learning in all past ages, and will in all 
ages tocome. No argument against the sun will drive 
it from the sky. No mole-eyed skepticism, dazzled by 
its brightness, can turn away the shining it refuses to 
look upon. And they who long after God will be ever 
turning their eyes thitherward, and either with reason 
or without reason, or, if need be, against manifold 
impediments of reason, will see and believe. 


CHAPTER XII 
WATER-MARKS IN THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 


THERE is no kind of evidence that is so convincing 
or is received with so great satisfaction, as that which, 
after long and doubtful search, is suddenly discovered 
to have all the while been on hand, incorporated, though 
unobserved, in the very subject matter of inquiry. Thus, 
for example, a suit upon a note of hand had long been 
pending in one of the courts of our commonwealth, pay- 
ment of which was resisted, on the ground that it was 
and must be a forgery, no such note having ever been 
given. But the difficulty was, in the trial, to make 
out any conclusive evidence of what the defending 
party knew to be the truth. His counsel was, in fact, 
despairing utterly of success; but it happened that, 
just as he was about closing his plea, having the note 
in his hand, and bringing it up, in the motion of his 
hand, so that the light struck through, his eye caught 
the glimpse of a mark in the paper. He stopped, held 
it up deliberately to the light, and behold the name, in 
water-mark, of a company that had begun the manu- 
facture of paper after the date of the instrument! Here 
was evidence, without going far to seek it — evidence 
enough to turn the plaintiff forthwith into a felon, and 
consign him, as it did, to a felon’s punishment. 

Just so there is, we now propose to show, a certain 
divine water-mark in the Christian doctrine, which, 

352 


A DISTINCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 353 


whether we see it or not, is there, waiting, at all times, 
to be seen, and to give to all who will look for it, in- 
dubitable proof of its supernatural and divine origin. 

And, first of all, we select for an example, or princi- 
pal instance, the grand comprehensive distinction of the 
Christian system, viz., the assumption it every where 
makes of a necessarily twofold economy in the training 
of souls. This assumption, or assumed necessity, ap- 
pears and reappears on almost every page of the New 
Testament. The two economies are “two covenants ; ” 
two ministrations ; “‘a ministration of condemnation,” 
and a “ministration of righteousness ;” “lawand grace ;” 
“bondage and liberty ;” “the letter that killeth, and 
the spirit that giveth life;” “the law that makes 
nothing perfect ;” and “charity which is the bond of 
perfectness.” 

We have spoken already! of this twofold process in 
the training of a soul, and shown the privative condi- 
tion it is necessarily in, till it has passed through the 
first stage of economy, and come forth in the second. 
Our object here, in recurring to the subject, is differ- 
ent; viz., to show the remarkable advantage Chris- 
tianity, or the Christian gospel has, in the positive and 
deliberate recognition of a truth so plainly fundamental, 
and one that, as soon as it is definitely stated, inevitably 
verifies itself and becomes an immovable conviction in 
every thoughtful mind. Christianity is just here quite 
alone ; alone, that is, in the deepest and most radical 
of all conceptions that pertain to the discipline of 
virtue ; alone, that is, in perceiving beforehand the 
necessary duality of the process, and conforming itself 
deliberately to what is required, in the preparation of 
a grand dual economy. In this fact all the human 


1Chapter IV., p. 105, 


354 THE DUAL ECONOMY OF VIRTUE, 


philosophers are left behind. For, while the Christian 
scriptures are so forward, and full, and explicit, in as- 
serting the two testaments, and displaying their relative 
use and power throwing themselves out boldly on their 
doctrine, in the noble confidence of truth, the philoso- 
phers’do not appear, as yet, even to have had their 
attention attracted to the question. Such of them as 
were educated under’ Christianity appear to have re- 
garded its manifold representations of letter and spirit, 
law and grace, a ministration of condemnation and a 
ministration of righteousness, as the unmeaning jingle 
or pious cant only of revelation; entitled, in that view, 
to no philosophic respect. Indeed it is not a little re- 
markable, that some of the heathen philosophers appear 
to have approached the Christian doctrine more closely 
than they. 

Our Christian philosophers, so called — Christian, not 
because they teach any thing that deserves the name, 
but because they are born in Christian countries — com- 
monly begin with man as being simply a conscious 
intelligence, conceiving him to be in his proper normal 
state, and to have, in that view, certain susceptibilities 
to virtue; a conscience, a free will, a power of doing 
good and receiving injury. Then, ignoring, as a fact 
of no consequence, the abnormal and diseased state of 
sin, they go on to build up their schemes of ethical 
practice ; showing what the foundations of virtue may 
be, and upon those foundations erecting their codes of 
observance. But as they never allow themselves to look 
on the fact of depravity, and the consequent state of 
psychological disorder, so they never trouble themselves 
about any such superlative notions of virtuous living, 
as respect the perfection and final beatitude of the soul. 
Their concern is simply to determine the authority of 


A DISTINCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 300 


what is called virtue, and show the matters of good 
behavior that are binding on men, in the relations of 
domestic, social, and public life. They inculcate noth- 
ing but legalities. It is virtue enough to do the right 
things, no matter whether they are done grudgingly 
and by hard constraint, or willingly, cheerfully, and 
gladly, as the spontaneous tribute of a full and ready 
heart ; no matter, indeed, whether it be only the doing 
of some right things, such as concern human society, 
leaving out the duties owed to God, or whether it in- 
clude all duty and so the possibility of a principle! 
Meager, sad-looking impostures, these ethical schemes, 
that bear the name of philosophy! 

But the heathen philosophers, as we have already 
intimated, often do better. It is not any part of phi- 
losophy with them, to steer wide of the truths of Chris- 
tianity, and ignore all the great questions of revealed 
religion. Their ignorance of Christianity delivers them 
of any such feeble and absurd jealousy. Accordingly 
they go directly into the great and solemn problems of 
human existence, with a free mind, and a universal aim. 
They take up the question of evil. They recognize, in 
the fullest manner, as we have shown already, the 
depravity of human nature, and the state of general 
distemper produced by sin. They recognize also the 
sense of bondage encountered by every soul, in its en- 
deavors to resume self-government, and re-establish the 
harmony of virtue. They go farther, they conceive a 
new and higher state of possible assimilation to God, 
or the gods, which they celebrate as the liberty of virtue. 
Thus Plato shows that “the more conformed the soul is 
to the Divine Will, so much the more perfect and free it 
is.”1 Even Aristotle recognizes the necessity of freedom 


1Leg., 4. 


356 THE DUAL ECONOMY OF VIRTUE, 


in virtuous exercises as being the only sufficient ground 
of stability in them, “because blessed souls live and 
dwell always in such exercises, without tediousness or 
staleness of mind.”1 Epictetus, in like manner, shows 
that “submitting the mind to the mind that governs all 
things, as good citizens to the law, is perfect liberty.”? 
And Seneca coincides with all such testimonies, in the 
declaration “that it is a great and free mind that has 
given itself up to God.” It could also be shown, by 
abundant citations, that they even disallowed the name 
of virtue to any merely legal or constrained practice. 
Having advanced so far, in the right direction, we almost 
look to see them taking up the impression of some nec- 
essary twofold process, in the grand economy of virtue. 
But they are in a limitation. The assimilation to God, 
in which they rest their hope of liberty, or the complete 
state of virtue, is not prepared by a gospel and a new, 
supernatural, and redemptive movement, but only, as 
they conceive, by an application of their minds to God. 
‘The philosopher,” says Plato, “conversing with what 
is divine and excellent, becomes, as far as what is human 
may, divine and excellent.” Again, “ Assimilation to 
God, in righteousness and holiness, is the result of wis- 
dom or philosophy.”* They had no conception, there- 
fore, of two ministrations, and could not be expected, 
under a scheme of truth so deficient, to take up the yet 
deeper conception of a necessarily twofold process in 
the economy of virtue. As the Christian philosophers 
have never taken the hint of this antecedent necessity, 
from the manifold declarations of the scripture, so these 
others have fallen short of it, because they had nothing 
to yield them such a hint. 

And yet how easy it seems, having the hint of it once 


1Kth., L.1.,C.10. 2In Arrian,1: 2. %Repub. ‘4 Thestet. 


A DISTINCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 357 


given, to verify this necessity! Though no one of the 
philosophers was ever able to take up such a conception, 
it requires no philosopher, when it is once given, but 
only a thoughtful man, to perceive the certain truth of 
it. If (1) there is to be a moral regimen set up in 
souls, it must begin with law, or imposed obligation; no 
matter whether it be only pronounced in the conscience, 
or, outwardly also in a revelation. Again, (2) it is 
equally plain that mere law can bring nothing to per- 
fection. The experiment of disobedience will be tried. 
The very motive it supplies to virtue, viz., retribution, 
makes the virtue wearisome, and a burden certain to be 
east off.. It has no motivity that generates liberty ; on 
the contrary, the motivity it has, appealing only to 
interest, detains from liberty. And yet, (3) the law, 
it is equally manifest, will be a necessary condition, or 
first stage in the process of holy training. It will im- 
press the sense of law, as a condition of well-being. It 
will also develop the knowledge of sin — whatit is, and 
does, and deserves. And the bondage it creates, or 
which is created under it, the hopelessness, the death, 
will prepare the want of a deliverer. The regimen of 
abstract law, again, (4) is, in this view, seen to be 
inherently faulty, even though the precept be perfect ; 
hence that nothing but a personal homage, or faith in a 
divine person — whose character and life, embraced in 
love, suppose the embrace of all law —can finally bring 
in its principle, and establish it in the liberty of an 
eternal and celestial love. 

See, then, how distinctly all this and more is said in 
the Christian documents. Hold them up to the light, 
and let the divine water-mark, or inwrought signature 
of God, appear! Whence comes it that these gospels 
and epistles, clothed in no pomp of philosophy, and 


358 THE DUAL ECONOMY OF VIRTUE, 


decked with no literary pretensions, so far transcend all 
the philosophy of all ages, opening up deeper truths 
regarding the great problem of human existence, than 
have any where else been discovered to the thought of 
man? They tell us, in the utmost simplicity of manner, 
and with no air of discovery, that God has two minis- 
trations for us, letter and spirit, law and grace. As 
regards the first, they tell us that it is a fundamental 
and first fact in God’s economy, no jot or tittle of 
which can ever fail —a perfect law, and so the basis, 
or formal idea, of all perfection. Yet, as an abstraction, 
commanded by authority, and enforced by power, it 
makes nothing perfect. It is only a schoolmaster, that 
sets the training on foot, and brings it on asingle stage. 
It is more unfortunate, however, than most school- 
masters, for the stage it prepares is one of loss and 
defeat, and not of gain — ordained to be unto life, it is 
found to be unto death. It is a ministration of condem- 
nation. It is the letter that killeth. It entered that 
the offense might abound. Weak through the flesh, it 
accomplishes nothing but a state of bondage, and the 
loosing of retributive causes that set the whole creation 
groaning and travailing in pain together. And all this, 
we perceive, was understood as well at the beginning 
as afterward. For, if there had been a law given that 
could have given life, then verily righteousness should 
have been by the law. But that was inherently impos- 
sible, and the impossibility is recognized from the first. 
The legal state was instituted, not as a finality, but as a 
first stage in the process of training ; to develop the 
sense of guilt and spiritual want, to beget a knowledge 
of sin, its exceeding sinfulness, and the insupportable 
bondage it creates. And then appears, in the person 
of the incarnate Redeemer a new and higher ministra- 


A DISTINCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 309 


tion, designed, from the foundation of the world, to 
complement or, even in superseding, to establish the 
other. Now he hath obtained a more excellent ministry, 
-by how much also he is the mediator of a better cove- 
nant, which was established upon better promises. For, 
if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no 
place have been sought for the second. Now it is no 
more a question of works; there never could have been 
a rational expectation of human perfection on that 
basis ; but it is a question of simple faith. The right- 
eousness of God without, or apart from the law, is now 
manifested, even the righteousness of God which is by 
faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that 
believe. What we call our virtue now is no more a 
will-work, or a something done according to law, but it 
is a continuous and living ingeneration of God, who 
has thus become a divine impulse or quickening in us, 
and so the life of our life. Therefore now we are free. 
Embracing the person of Christ, and yielding the 
homage of our hearts to him, we do, in fact, resume the 
law, in our deliverance from its bondage. We keep 
his commandments, because we adhere to his person, 
and we enter thus into a liberty that fulfills all law, the 
liberty of love. There is therefore now no condemnation 
to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from the 
law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, 
in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending 
his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, 
condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of 
the law [1.e., of the precept, | might be fulfilled in us, 
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. The 
bondage now is gone. The stage of liberty is come. 
This is the Spirit that giveth life. This is the minis- 


360 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


tration of righteousness. And if the ministration of 
condemnation be glorious, much more doth the minis- 
tration of righteousness exceed in glory. 

This exposition of the two ministrations we have 
given as nearly as possible in the language of scripture. 
Not to be struck by the magnificence of the thought 
would argue great dullness. All known speculations 
of philosophy regarding the moral economy of human 
life sink into littleness and utter incompetency by the 
side of it. 

A very curious question, then, it is, whence came 
this doctrine, and what should have set any writer, or 
any Christian school of writers, on the conception of it ? 
Why does it appear in the scriptures of the New Testa- 
ment, and nowhere else? It has, at first, a canting 
sound, it wears a strange, peculiar air, and comes to us 
in strange, half-mystic words — “letter” and “ spirit,” 
“law” and “grace,” two “covenants,” two “ testa- 
ments,” two “ministrations’’—but it grows under 
inspection, fills itself out in the sublimity of its reasons, 
and finally stands confessed as the only adequate, the 
only true and real philosophy. It is no crude sugges- 
tion or new thought half discovered. It is fully 
wrought out; all the points are stated. Every thing 
is set in complete working order ; yet with no parade 
of science or of definition, and, as it were, no con- 
sciousness of the transcendent superiority it reveals. 
Whence, then, came it? that is the question. And 
there is but one answer. We could sooner believe that 
Plato’s dialogues were written by some wild herdsman 
of Scythia, than that this grand distinctive doctrine of 
the scripture is of human invention. It bears the eter- 
nal water-mark of divinity, and that ends all inquiry. 

We pass on now to observe another most impressive 


INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE 361 


distinction of Christianity, in what may be called the 
grouping of its ideas ; and especially the fact that they 
group themselves in such beautiful order and harmony 
about the grand, supernatural fact of the incarnation. 
That it is a fact supernatural in its form, will not be 
denied ; this indeed is one of the chief grounds of 
impeachment against the gospels. It will also be 
agreed, that if any such divine movement is really 
inaugurated in the world, there needs to be also a 
whole system of ideas and doctrines, springing forth 
and grouping themselves in order round it. Other- 
wise we have no sufficient instrumentation, for our 
human use or handling of so great a fact, and our per- 
sonal appropriation of it—no fit medium of thought 
respecting it. 

Here then we discover, again, upon a large scale, 
the secret evidence of a higher presence in the gospel. 
To frame such a fitting of ideas and doctrines, by 
human invention, out of the materials of natural sagac- 
ity and reason, we may fairly say is impossible. There 
have been as many as nine avatars or incarnations, the 
Bramins tell us, of their god Vishnu; and multitudes 
of incarnations can be cited from the various pagan 
mythologies; but when has there been developed, 
round the pretended supernatural fact, any scheme of 
ideas or truths, internally agreeing with it and having 
their roots of life in it? It is a very easy thing, we 
may admit, to imagine a supernatural fact, an incarna- 
tion for example, but to fit it with a range of doctrines 
and holy ideas, such as will connect it with human 
“~perience and make it practical, is what no mortal 
~visdom was ever able to do. Thus, if there were 
ziven the fact of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, or his 
miraculous birth as the Son of Mary, there is no philos- 


362 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


opher of mankind who could invent, around that central 
fact, a system of ideas and doctrines that would not, 
by their wild extravagance, and also by their manifest 
want of any vital agreement or coherence with it, turn 
it into mockery. Much less could he form a yehicle of 
doctrine that would make that central fact a power, in 
the practical life, and dovetail it into the experience of 
mankind. 

But all this we shall see accomplished, in the easiest 
and most natural manner possible, in the Christian doc- 
trine. And this is the line of our argument; that all 
the capital points or ideas of Christianity frame into 
the supernatural, on one hand, in such beautiful order 
and facility, and without any strain of contrivance or. 
logical adaptation ; and into human experience, on the 
other, in a way so consonant to the dignity of reason, 
and the wants and disabilities of sin, that the signature 
of God is plainly legible in the documents. The 
examples to be cited are numerous, and we set them 
forth under numerical notations. 

1. The new religion, or that of the divine advent, is 
called a gospel. Why a gospel more than a wisdom, or 
philosophy, or doctrine ? These, and such like, are the 
names assumed by all the world’s great teachers ; but 
it occurs to none of them to call their utterance, what- 
ever it be, good news or a gospel. Whence the distine- 
tion? It grows out of the simple fact that they offer a 
doctrine drawn out of premises in nature, and .the con- 
tents of natural reason, a doctrine which, being in those 
premises, is already given, and only waits to be deduced. 
Whereas, Christ comes into the world from without,-and 
above it, and brings in with him new premises, not here 
before. He is therefore proclaimed as news, good news 
— “behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which 


INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE 363 


shall be to all people.” Christ also conceives himself 
and his work in the same manner — “ Go ye into all the 
world and preach the gospel to every creature.” His 
apostles all follow testifying the fact, as new tidings — 
“ God was in Christ reconciling the world unto him- 
self.” If it should be said that the work of Christ is 
called a gospel by mere natural suggestion, because it 
is a real communication from another world to this, we 
care not to object, because the term is thus accounted 
for in a way that supposes the fact of a supernatural 
mission ; though, if the supposed mission were a fact 
given, it is doubtful whether any human skill, left to 
itself, would ever suit the fact with a name that so 
exactly corresponds with its peculiarity, as a fact appear- 
ing in the world, but not of it. It would be called by. 
any other name, probably, as soon as by the name gospel, 
and if some name in great repute with men were at 
hand, such as would mark it with a special honor, prob- 
ably sooner. But suppose there were no supernatural 
fact at all in the case, and that all we find of that char- 
acter in the work were reducible to myth, or quite ex- 
plained away by a rationalistic interpretation. Whence, 
in that view, will the name gospel come? If there is 
no supernatural fact at all, nor any thing more than a 
~ pretense of it, who is going to handle even that fiction 
so nicely, as to fit it with the very peculiar name, 
gospel? 

2. We have another of the radical notions of this 
gospel presented in the word salvation. The work is 
called a salvation. The incarnate Word is named 
- Jesus, by anticipation ; because he will save the people 
from their sins. He declares finally, that he came to 
seek and to save, and his work is published, after he is 
gone, as the grace of God that bringeth salvation. 


364 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


Meantime no human teacher has ever come to men 
with any thing called by that name. The human 
teachers come with disquisitions, theories, philosophies, 
pedagogies, schemes of reformation, ideal republics, 
doctrines of association. But they, none of them, speak 
of salvation. And that, for the simple reason, that they 
have not conceived the state of unnature under sin, as 
a really lost or undone. state, requiring a supernatural 
and divine interposition to restore the ruin suffered. 
This is the point distinctly conceived by Christianity, 
and therefore it is called a salvation. Plato saw dis- 
tinctly enough the depravity of human nature, and his 
doctrine of virtue, we have seen, was that it can be: 
formed in the soul, only by a divine communication. It 
is therefore only the more impressive, as a contrast, that, - 
having these two elements of Christianity on hand, he - 
nowhere conceives the virtue wrought to be a salvation. 
After all, the state of sin is not to him a practically 
lost state, but the transition to virtue, slurred by indis- 
tinctness, is virtually regarded as a growth, or advance, 
on the footing of nature ; not a rescue from nature by 
au power above nature ; therefore not a salvation. 

3. The doctrine of this salvation makes it a salvation, 
by faith ; in which we have another ruling idea of the 
scheme that coincides with its supernatural facts and 
character. Christianity differs from all philosophies 
and ethical doctrines of men, in the fact that it rests all 
virtue in faith; exactly as it should, if it be a grace 
imported into nature from without, an advent in the 
world of one who is from above. Such a salvation lies 
not within the premises of natural fact and reason ; it 
is not therefore a matter of science, or of logical deduc- 
tion. It makes its address, therefore, not to reason, but 
to faith. Reason may be allowed to have a tribunitial 


INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE 365 


veto against it, provided the doctrine is certainly proved 
to be contrary toreason; but it cannot be received by 

~reason. It is only received, when faith comes, laden 
with sin and fettered by its iron bondage, to rest her- 
self, in holy trust, on the transcendent fact of such an 
appearing, and to find by experiment that it is, in sacred 
reality and power, what it assumes to be. It finds the 
new premise true, proves it to be true, intuits it, in 
and by the immediate experience of the mind. The 
new salvation is by faith, because it is a supernatural 
salvation ; for whatever virtue the plan ministers must 
be in and by the receiver’s faith, practically trusting 
soul and spirit to the fact of such a Saviour and 
salvation. 

There is much quarreling with the New Testament 
on this ground. It becomes an offense because it re- 
quires faith. Where is the merit of mere believing, 
that it should be made the necessary condition of salva- 
tion? In one view there is none, we answer, and it is 
not required because there is any. There is no merit 
in trusting a physician, but it may be a matter of some 
consequence that his medicines be taken ; as they will 
not be, without some kind of faith in him. So it is a 
matter of consequence that the Christian grace be 
accepted, as it certainly will not be, unless the soul is 
practically trusted to it and the giver. If there is to 
be a healing, a new ingeneration of life and holy virtue, 
it can never be, save by the efficacy of a supernatural 
remedy. Believing in that remedy is the same thing as 
coming into its power ; and, therefore, on this faith the 
gospel hangs salvation. It could not be otherwise. If 
Christianity, being supernatural, offered salvation on 
any other terms than faith, the offer would even be 
absurd, having no agreement with the grace offered. 


366 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


That it hangs salvation on this condition indicates a 
thorough insight of its own nature, and the more ready 
the shallow wit of man is to find fault with such a con- 
dition, as humiliating or insulting to reason, the more 
evidently it is not from man, but from a superior and 
superhuman source. 

Regarding faith, in this manner, as having its value, 
not in its own merit, but in what it receives, we would 
not be understood to represent it as an optional matter, 
without any positive obligation. It is a duty binding 
on every moral being, to believe and practically receive 
every thing that is true; and this on the principle that 
mind, honestly used, will distinguish all important 
truth. Doubtless one may become so entangled by 
the ingenious sophistries of sin, or so darkened by its 
baleful shadow, that he can not in a moment find, or 
finding, can not embrace the truth. In such a case, 
the blame must rest upon his guilty past, and the 
mental distortion he has created, by his former abuse 
of truth, until such time as he can recover his sight. 
And this he may do rapidly, if only, trusting in God, 
he will take into practice, for medicine, every single 
truth he is able to find. All his unbeliefs and mis- 
beliefs will be certainly cleared in this manner. And 
therefore Christ requires it of him, that they shall be; 
throwing his salvation even upon his belief of the truth. 

4. Justification by faith is another distinctive point 
of the Christian gospel. And this includes two prin- 
cipal matters combined; that the transgressor, believ- 
ing, has a righteousness generated in him, which is not 
built up under the law, by his own practice; and that 
something has been done to compensate the law, vio- 
lated by his past offenses, and save it in honor, when 
his sin is forgiven. 


INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE 367 


As to the former, the righteousness ingenerated, the 
manner is sufficiently indicated, when it is called the 
righteousness that is of God by faith, unto and upon all 
them that believe. It is unto and upon such only as 
believe ; because, as we just now said, speaking of sal- 
vation, it is only by faith that the soul is so trusted to, 
and deposited in, the supernatural grace of God, as 
to be invested with his righteousness, or assimilated to 
it. Besides it will be observed that this is called justi- 
fication, partly because the natural laws of retributive 
justice, which are penally chastising the sinner, holding 
him fast in the meshes of inextricable disorder and woe, 
can be controverted, or turned aside, only by a power 
supernatural and divine. 

As to the latter point concerned, the implied com- 
pensation to law, in the supposed free justification, it 
is not that something is done to be a spectacle before 
unknown worlds, or something to square up a legal 
account of pains and penalties, according to some small 
scheme of book-keeping philosophy, but it is simply 
this; that, as there must be two stages of discipline to 
carry on the world—viz., letter and spirit, law and 
grace —the introduction of pardon, or the universal 
and free remission of sins, must be so prepared, as not 
to do away with the law stage that is precedent, but 
must let them both exist together, to act concurrently 
on the world. And this is done by the obedience of 
Christ, obedience unto death. Who can say or think 
that God yields up his law in the forgiveness of sins, 
when the Word incarnate, bowing to that law of love 

‘himself —the same that our human sin has broken — 
renders up his life to it, and goes to the awful passion 
of the cross, that he may fulfill its requirements. Mag- 
nified and made honorable, by such a contribution of 


368 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


respect, no free remission or removal of penalties run- 
ning against us, can be felt to shake its authority. 

It is hardly necessary to suggest the fact, that Chris- 
' tianity is radically distinguished, in this matter of justi- 
fication, from the philosophies and the known religions. 
They see nothing in sin, or its penal disorders, that re- 
quires a distinctly supernatural remedy; or, when they 
are removed, any apparent infringement of law and 
justice. They only think to make men better by some- 
thing done upon the natural, footing ; which, if they 
can do, they have no farther concern. They have no 
such conception of a twofold economy of God as makes 
it a matter of consequence to see that, when he for- 
gives, the law is saved to the world and kept on foot, 
as an element of training and discipline. If they speak 
of pardon, it is no such pardon as partakes a judicial 
character. Or if they speak of expiation, offering up 
their children, it may be, to buy the release of their 
sin, it is the passions of their God they seek to arrest, 
and not his desecrated authority they will sanctify. 
They have no care for law, and no suspicion that their 
God has any. They have no conception of any such 
solemn relations between their sin and the eternal gov- 
ernment of the world, as creates a difficulty in the way 
of releasing their punishment. No difficulty is appre- 
hended, save in the ill-nature of their God; and they 
expect to appease him by giving him pains enough, 
and gory bodies enough of the innocent, to satisfy 
him. But the Christian truth is deeper in its reasons, 
and has a more benign character. It comes into the 
world as a divine advent, to fulfill a second stage in ~ 
the moral economy of holiness. As the law begins 
with nature, so this finishes with supernatural grace. 
As one binds, the other liberates; as one kills, the 


INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE 369 


other makes alive; and yet so tempered are they both, 
that they are kept in perpetual action together. Let 
the philosophers and human teachers show us that they 
have some comprehension of the great problem of life, 
and of God’s relation to it, equally comprehensive in 
its breadth, and deep in its reasons. 

5. It is another of the grand distinctions of Chris- 
tianity that it sets up a kingdom of God on earth. 
It is called “the kingdom of God” or “of heaven,” 
because the organic force by which so many wills and 
finally all mankind are to be gathered into unity, is not 
in nature, but comes down out of heaven, in the person 
of Christ the king. It is very natural that the dif- 
ferent political organizations of the world should be 
employed figuratively, as terms of representation, in 
matters not political. Thus we have theoretic com- 
monwealths, and ideal republics. Truth is conceived 
as an empire. In the natural sciences we have what 
are called three kingdoms, the animal, and vegetable, 
and mineral. But here we have, what is not elsewhere 
conceived, a supernatural kingdom in souls, the king- 
dom of God; a real, living polity, organized by a real 
king, and swayed and propagated by the powers of 
truth and love, centered in his divine person. Jesus 
coming into the world, as the incarnate Word of God, 
brings a new force with him, entering into souls as the 
advent of a new divine power. In him therefore 
begins, of course, a new organization, the kingdom’ of 
God in souls — righteousness, and peace, and joy in the 
Holy Ghost. This accordingly is the great thought of 
Chistianity —the kingdom of God; the implanting of a 
divine rule in lost men, and the gathering in, at last, of all 
people and kindreds of the earth, into a vast universal 
order of peace and truth under Christ the anointed king. 


370 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


The fact grows out of the incarnation, so that 
when Jesus is about to appear, the kingdom of heaven 
is at hand. No other religion, no priest or seer, no 
avatar of deity, has ever raised such a conception. It 
is the peculiar thought or fact of Christianity. And 
yet, daring as the proposition is, so extravagant that 
no mere man could make it without a charge of lunacy, 
Christ undertakes it — Christ, the Nazarene carpenter 
—and what is more, assumes the dominion and makes 
his kingdom good. And yet, if he could not make it 
good, his incarnation could not stand, as an accepted 
fact. So closely interwoven are these two, the incar- 
nate appearing, and the kingdom of God. 

6. The Holy Spirit also is a Christian conception, 
standing in profound agreement with the supernatural 
fact of the gospel. As Christ, incarnate, is a supernat- 
ural embodiment, or manifestation localized in space, so 
the Holy Spirit is a supernatural indwelling force, by 
which Christ is perpetuated in the world, universalized 
in all localities, and brought nigh to every being, in 
every place. And that there may be no mistake re- 
garding the supernatural character of his agency, he is 
represented as being inaugurated by external signs, 
and by gifts of utterance and healing, that transcend all 
human power. He is not to be confounded, in this 
respect, with conceptions often taken up by the 
eastern sages and philosophers, that are analogous in 
form, but really suppose, in their minds, no agency of 
God, save that which is implied in his omnipresent 
dominion over nature. ‘God, they conceived, per- 
meates or passes through all things,”! and they called 
him in this view, “the divine spirit.” Thus Apuleius 
says that “nothing is so excellent, or great in power, as 


1 Cud. IL, 498. 2De Mundo, 68. 


INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE 371 


to be content with its own nature alone, void of the 
divine aid or influence.’’ Philoponus, with our very 
point of need in his eye, calls what should be the 
Spirit, simply a Providence. ‘Though the soul be 
lapsed into a preternatural or unnatural state, still it is 
yet not neglected by Providence, but has a constant 
care taken of it, in order to its recovery.”! Seneca 
distinctly conceives a divine spirit, active in us, and 
yet this spirit dwindles into a minister only of natural 
retribution. ‘The sacred spirit dwells in us, observer 
of our evil things, guardian of our good, and he treats 
us as we treat him.” None of these conceptions 
really meets the case of a supernatural religion. This 
demands a Spirit engaged to deliver and competent to 
deliver from the lapse of nature, by acting on the fallen 
subject, and separating him from the retributive action 
of natural causes; dwelling in him thus, holding him 
up, guiding him on, extricating his liberty, and witness- 
ing in him, as a divine revelation to his consciousness. 
_ There is also a profound necessity for the Holy 
Spirit, thus conceived, in the miraculous advent of 
Christ itself. Christ and the Spirit are complementary 
forces, and, both together, constitute a complete whole ; 
such a kind of whole as no man, or myth, or accident 
ever invented. There was an inherent necessity that 
whatever supernatural movement, for the regeneration 
of man, might be undertaken, should include, both a 
moral, and an efficient agency ; one before the under- 
standing, and the other back of it, in the secret springs 
of the disordered nature; a divine object clothed in 
beauty, and love, and justice, to be a mold into which 
the soul may be formed, the type of a divine life in 
which it may consentingly be crystallized ; an efficient 


1Proem in Aristotle de Anima. 2Hp., 41. 


372 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


grace, working within the soul, preparing it to will and 
to do and rolling back the currents of retributive 
causes in it, opening it to the power of its glorious 
exemplar and drawing it ever into that and a life pro- 
ceeding from it. Without the former before the mind, 
whatever is done within, by efficiency, would be only a 
work of repair, a something executed, of whose way or 
method we should know as little as we do of health 
restored by hidden causes. The change would be 
merely physical, not any change of character at all, 
more than when the secretions of the body are 
changed. Without the latter —the efficient working 
—the model set before us in the divine beauty of 
Christ and his death, would find us dulled in under- 
standing, blurred in perception, and held fast in the 
penal bondage of our sins; approving the good before 
us only faintly, desiring it coldly, endeavoring after it, 
if at all, impotently, even as a bird might try to rise 
whose wings are cut. 

Such is the profound agreement of Christ and the 
Holy Spirit. One is naught without the other. Given 
then the fact of the incarnation, and of Christ’s human 
appearing, by whom was this remarkable counterpart or 
complement to his appearing invented? Who, in other 
words, contrived the day of pentecost? Was ita man? 
was it several men of only common faith? or was it 
done by the loose gossip of a wondering and credulous 
age? The history says that Christ himself gave the 
Spirit, by direct promise; declaring that it was expe- 
dient now for him to retire from before the eyes, that 
the Spirit might come, and taking his exemplar into 
men’s bosoms, in every place, all over the world, show 
it to them there. Who but Christ and he, the eternal 
Son of God, ever generated this conception ? 


INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE 373 


T. The doctrine of spiritual regeneration, propounded 
in the gospel, is another point where it meets, at once, 
our human state and the fact of a supernatural economy. 
This truth of regeneration supposes a loss out of human 
nature, of the seed-principle of a good and holy life ; 
such that the subject has really no good in his char- 
acter, and never can by himself generate, or set him- 
self in, the principle of good. He can do many good 
things, such as men call good, according to the standard 
of ethics or of human custom (which is the world’s law of 
virtue) and may fitly enough be praised for the comely 
parts that make up the figure of his life. But these 
comelinesses are a virtue of items, mere will-works that 
proceed from no seed-principle of good. Sometimes 
even the worldly-minded teachers of Christianity take 
up with this kind of virtue, and form their estimates of 
character, by inspecting the atoms collected in the life. 
Some things done, they say, are good, and some are 
bad —the good things ought to be increased, and the 
bad reduced. They see, of course, no radical defect 
back of the particulars noted, and therefore no need of 
a radical change in the life. It is the things done that 
make the character, and not the principle, or want of it, 
that gives character to the things. Their gospel is even 
more shallow than a pagan’s philosophy. According to 
Seneca, who penetrates the real ground-work of human 
character — “all sins are in all men, but do not appear 
in each man. He that hath one sin, hath all. We say 
that all men are intemperate, avaricious, luxurious, 
malign — not that these sins appear in all, but because 
they may be, yea, are, in all, though latent.”! Nothing 
is more rational ; for, if nothing is done from any right 
principle, then nothing done is right, and there is no 


1Ep., 50. 


374 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


seed of right-doing in us. The doings may be kept up 
by our will, without any seed-principle, so attentively 
and punctiliously as even to become tastes ; but tastes 
are not inspirations, and the only true virtue of man is - 
that which he does from God, in the inspiration of a 
divine liberty. Separated from God, he is a monster, 
and not a proper man, however plausible the show he 
makes. And this is the effect of sin. It alienates the 
subject from the life of God. Under sin, he is no 
more conscious of God, as in his normal state he was 
and must be. He is therefore uncentralized by it, dead 
at the core. The seed-principle of eternal life and 
beauty and orderis gone. He centersin himself, gravyi- 
tates downward into, collapses in, himself; and he 
could as easily leap out of the maelstrom, as set him- 
self in the true liberty and seed-principle of holiness. 
It is therefore declared, as the necessary condition of 
our salvation, that we must be born again, born not of 
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God. And this great change is the beginning 
and spring of all true heavenly virtue, because it is the 
revelation of God in the soul. Now the soul is con- 
scious of God again. Now it moves in the line of the 
divine movement, which is moving in the Spirit ; which, 
again, is the inspiration of liberty. All this, of course, 
not without consent in the subject, probably not with- 
out some deep and violent struggles on his part, to 
make way for the divine revelation. He must offer up 
himself to the divine will and to all the approaches of 
the divine love ; and this includes much —a removal 
of all obstructions, a renunciation of self, a free commit- 
ment of all things to Christ, and a pliant, unequivocal, 
and humble faith in him. But none of these are, by 
_. themselves, regeneration. That is of God, and is, in fact, 


INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE Ste 


the soul’s assumption, or resumption, by God. To say 
that it is a change of the soul’s love, is only another 
version of the same truth ; for the love is changed by 
the entering in of God and his love, into the soul’s 
faith. For love is of God, and every one that loveth is 
born of God, and knoweth God. Old things are passed 
away, and all things are become new ; because God is 
revealed within, changing, of course, the principle of 
all action, and the meaning of all experience. That 
this new revelation is supernatural, coinciding, in every 
thing said of it, with the grand central fact of the 
incarnation, need not be shown. Enough that it is the 
initiation of a sinner and alien into the kingdom of 
God — except a man be born again, he can not see the 
kingdom of God. 

8. The Christian doctrine of Providence coincides, 
also, with the fact of a supernatural work in the redemp- 
tion of mankind. It assumes, without misgiving, the 
bold conception of a supernatural Providence, under 
which the world itself is ruled in the interest of Chris- 
tianity ; a conception that will be verified in the next 
or following chapter, and therefore need not be dis- 
cussed here. Nothing more is necessary to our present 
purpose, than just to call attention to the remarkable 
fact that this myth, this marvel of superstition, this 
gossip of miracle, that we call Christianity, dares to 
claim the government of the world (as in real consist- 
ency it should) in its interest, and, what is more, 
history, as we shall see, audits the claim, and makes it 
good. 

9. We-name, as another point of the Christian doc- 
trine, strangely and surprisingly coincident with the 
supernatural idea of the plan, introduced by the incar- 
nate appearing of Christ, the Trinity of God. I say, 


376 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


strangely and surprisingly coincident, because the last 
thing that would occur to any human being, in the ex- 
ercise of his natural wisdom, would be the introduction 
of a new, or modified conception of God, to accommo- 
date the new fact of a gospel. And yet, exactly this is 
what we discover in the matter of that gospel; and, 
what is more, having the fact before us, we can easily 
enough distinguish a practical reason for it, in the 
requisite instrumental use, or handling of that gospel; 
or, what is no wise different, in the practical adjustment 
of our relations to God, under the twofold conditions of 
nature and grace, in which he is now set before us. 

We can not here go into the learning of this great 
question. Suffice it to say, that the Old Testament 
scriptures contain the rudiments of a trinity, and that 
the Platonic, Alexandrian, and Christian trinities are 
either suggested by, or developed from these rudiments. 
That the Old Testament scriptures are prior in date, 
even by hundreds of years, to the writings of Plato, is 
not to be denied. The east was full of traditions from 
these scriptures, and he himself, a traveler in those 
parts, professed that he derived many things from the 
traditions of the “ Barbarians.” It can not therefore be 
charged that the Christian trinity, as given by Christ, 
in the baptismal formula, was originally a product of 
natural reason, and was transferred from Plato’s theos- 
ophy. No trinity was ever suggested by mere thought, 
or generated by mere natural reason. Reason takes the 
road of unity, and the conception of a triad comes out, 
if at all, from the process of a supernatural revelation. 
Thus came the Christian trinity, as a fact historically 
developed ; first in the Almighty Creator and Father, 
the Jehovah-angel or Word of the Lord, and the Holy — 
Spirit, of the Old Testament; then in the Father, Son, 


INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE 377 


and Holy Ghost, of the New. It is a conception gener- 
ated by supernatural transactions, and is needed to 
accommodate the uses of a supernatural salvation. 
Thus, if there were but one economy, or ministration 
of God, known to us, viz., that of nature, we should 
never need, and, in fact, should never have, any concep- 
tion of the divine being, save that which is named by the 
terms God, the Almighty, the Creator, and others, con- 
formed to the notion of the divine unity. But, having 
fallen into a state of retributive disorder, from which we 
can be delivered only by a supernatural salvation, we are 
obliged to adjust ourselves toward God as filling two 
economies, and that requires a new machinery of thought. 
If now we have only the single term God, we must speak 
of God as dealing with God, or of the grace-force of 
God, as delivering from the nature-force of God. If the 
work includes an incarnation, as we suppose it must, 
then it must be God sending God into the world; and, 
if it includes a renovating, new-revealing agency within, 
then we can only go to God to give us God, and ask of 
God to roll back the retributive causations of God, that 
are fastening their penal bondage on us. All which, we 
may see, is a method too clumsy and confused to serve, 
at all, the practical uses of the salvation provided. 
There is, in short, no intellectual machinery, in a close 
theoretic monotheism, for any such thing as a work of 
grace, or supernatural redemption. In the Christian 
trinity, this want is supplied. First, we have the Father, } 
setting God before us as the author and ground of all 
natural things and causes. Then we have the Son and 
the Spirit, which represent what God may do, acting on 
the lines of causes in nature; one as coming into nature 
from without, to be incarnate in it, the other as working 
internally in the power of the Son, to dispense to the 


378 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION 


soul what he addressed outwardly to human thought, 
and configure the soul to him, as an exemplar embraced 
by its faith. Then, putting our trust in the Son, as 
coming down from God, offering himself before God, 
going up to him, interceding before him, reigning with 
him, by him accepted, honored, glorified; invoking 
also God and Christ to send down the Spirit, and let 
him be the power of a new indwelling life, breathing 
health into our diseases, and rolling back the penal 
currents of justice to free us of our sin, we are able to 
act ourselves before the new salvation, so as to receive 
the full force of it. Having these instruments of thought 
and feeling and faith toward God, and suffering no fool- 
ish quibbles of speculative logic to plague us, asking 
never how many Gods there are? nor how it is possible 
for one to send another, act before another, reconcile us 
to another? but, assured that God is one eternally, how- 
ever multiform our conceptions of his working, how 
lively and full and blessed is the converse we get, through 
these living personations, so pliant to our use as finite 
men, so gloriously accommodated to the twofold econ- 
omy of our salvation as sinners! Is this now a concep- 
tion gotten up by man, upon his natural level? Is there 
any philosophic, theosophic, or mythologic mark upon it? 

We have thus brought into review as many as nine 
of the principal facts and prominent articles of Chris- 
tianity, and find them crystallizing into a perfectly har- 
monious and orderly system, round the one central fact 
of a supernatural religion, initiated in the incarnate ap- 
pearing of Christ. His work is called a gospel on this 
account, precisely as it should be, and yet by no human 
suggestion would be. It is also called a salvation, differ- 
ing from all theosophies and mythologies, in the fact 
that it is a supernatural restorative force, and, in that 


INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE 379 


view, the only real salvation ever known. It brings the 
salvation also to faith and hangs it on faith, as by the 
conditions of the case it must, and as no other known 
scheme of virtue does. It justifies also by faith, com- 
municating, in this manner, the righteousness of God 
and preparing acquittal in a way that keeps the law in 
full force, as the nature-side and necessary element of 
human training. A kingdom of God, or of heaven, 
is erected by it on earth; in which we see, by the name 
itself, that the reigning force of the new kingdom is not 
of nature, but from without and above the world. The 
Holy Spirit is inaugurated as a conception of the divine 
working, different from that which is included in the 
laws of nature, and delivering from the retributive 
action of those laws. This deliverance, connected with 
a renovated principle of life in the soul, it calls regener- 
ation, conceiving, in a way peculiar to itself, that, with- 
out the change thus denominated, as a second birth, or 
newly regenerated life, there is and can be no seed- 
principle of heavenly virtue. Here too is proposed, for 
the first time in the world, a properly supernatural 
Providence ; that is, a Providence which governs the 
world, in the interest of salvation, or regenerated holi- 
ness. Accordantly also with such a conception of God, 
as presiding over a double administration of law and 
grace, nature and the supernatural, the divine unity is 
reproduced as trinity; in which, whatever may be 
thought of other trinities, Christianity holds, at least, the 
honorable distinction of being the only doctrine that 
conceives a trinity, in and through, and practically 
operative with, a double economy of divine government. 

Is there not something remarkable in this general 
consent of the Christian names, facts, ideas, and doc- 
trines? and the more remarkable that it appears in 


380 THIS COMPLETED SCHEME 


matters where we should least look for it, if left to our- 
selves and the natural processes of our thoughts? And 
still the list might be indefinitely extended. Thus 
preaching is to be the means of propagation for this 
gospel, and what but a supernatural gift to the world 
could ever be heralded or preached? Prophesying in 
the Spirit is a supernatural utterance. The ministry 
are conceived to be set apart by the Holy Spirit, which 
is true of no other class of teachers, on the footing of 
reason, or of natural science. Spiritual gifts belong to 
a plan transcending nature. The sacraments are con- 
secrated vehicles of grace and power. Visions and 
revelations are from above. The resurrection of the 
dead is not of nature. The history of the original propa- 
gation of Christianity, taken as a whole,is in fact a 
miraculous process, and nothing less. In short the 
whole fabric of the Christian institution — thought, 
name, office, fact, and doctrine — centers, we discover, in 
the one grand idea of a supernatural movement on the 
world. There is nothing eccentric that will not fall 
into the general aim of the plan, and chime with it ; no 
fantastic matter that is unreducible, as we should expect, 
- if human wisdom only had undertaken the devising and 
the adjustment of the parts. As Napoleon noticed, 
with an impression of wonder, “one thing follows an- 
other like the ranks of a celestial army.” He knew 
what an army was, and the order of a well-set disci- 
pline, but he finds a higher, ever celestial order, which 
his phalanx is a thing too loose to represent, in the glori- 
ously compacted truths of a heaven-born, supernatural 
faith. 

Even Mr. Hennel admits a correspondent impression 
of the compact unity, and the admirable working order 
of the Christian plan; admitting, strangely enough, that 


CAN NOT BE OF MAN 381 


it excels all other fruits of human learning and phi- 
losophy in this respect, and yet conceiving that, with all 
its high pretensions of a supernatural origin, and the 
undeniably supernatural guise in which it stands, it is 
itself a strictly human product! He says, “ Christianity 
has presented to the world a system of moral excellence. 
It has led forth the principles of humanity and benevo- 
lence from the recesses of the schools and groves, and 
compelled them to take an active part in the affairs of 
life. It has consolidated the moral and religious senti- 
ments into a more definite, influential form than had 
before existed, and thereby constituted an engine that 
has worked powerfully toward humanizing and civilizing 
the world.”! Moral and religious sentiments! as if it 
were only a compact of these and such like human 
qualities, when it is talking all the while of the in- 
carnation, of faith, of justification, of the better covenant, 
of regeneration, of the resurrection of the dead, and 
commanding its apostles to preach the trinity of God. 
Are these staple matters of Christianity our “ moral and 
religious sentiments”? ‘Consolidated ” also they are 
“into a more definite and influential form”! Isitin such 
lofty and transcendent spiritualities as these which are 
named, that our mere human notions are wont to get con- 
solidated ? And why could not the philosophers, such 
men as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca, 
consolidate such human notions as well, or to as good 
effect as, the rude fishermen of Galilee? And yet what is 
there of solidity, in giving to these mere natural things or 
sentiments, a form so fantastical and flighty, and calling 
them by names to which no human thought can reach? 
Doubtless Christianity is “more influential,” but it is so, 
because it is so truly unsolid, so spiritual, and so visibly 


1 Inquiry, p. 48. 


382 THIS COMPLETED SCHEME 


superior to the world, and to all those dull imbecilities 
sometimes called religious sentiments. God is in Christ, 
reconciling the world unto himself—that is influential, 
that is power! 

And now the question is, whence comes this super- 
natural, world-transcending institute, erected among us, 
in so many tokens of a perfect intelligence? Whence 
this more than logical, this organic unity in things so 
remote, and to mere human thought undiscoverable ? 
for if it be possible that human thought should stumble 
on a fiction so magnificent, it certainly could not frame 
it into order, and offer it as a truth of salvation. 

In adjusting our answer to this question, it is impor- 
tant, first of all, to observe that the Christian truth has 
obviously nothing of the form of a scheme thought out 
by the natural understanding. It is not metaphysical 
or deductive. It proposes itself to faith, under laws of 
expression, and is plainly seen to be no product of men- 
tal analysis, or constructive logic. It has the form not 
of something generated by, but of something offered to, 
the world. It comes down into history, as it represents, 
from a point above history ; standing out in symbols of 
fact and expression, that are to report and verify them- 
selves. It is, in form, a something to be believed, not 
a something reasoned — incarnation, love, miracle, a 
calling of God after men,a communication of the divine 
nature. Admitting, as we safely enough may, for the 
present, that criticism discovers tokens of human activ- 
ity and frailty in the record, still the operative system 
stands forth in its own simple confidence, in its own 
heavenly form, as a gospel to the world, and as such it 
reveals the solid unity, the glorious depth of harmony 
and self-understanding, we have discovered in its doc- 
trine. It speaks as if it never had a thought of system, 


CAN NOT BE OF MAN 383 


and yet reveals a reach of system wider than all human 
philosophy. 

But this will be denied, and still it will be maintained 
that this unconscious, inartificial fabric is a work of art. 
That, if we know any thing of what is in man, is impos- 
sible. If the scheme were down upon the footing of 
nature, as on the face it declares it is not, then it might 
not be difficult to admit that human skill, or even the 
silent process of human history, as in the case of the 
English common law, should shape it into a system of 
apparent order and scientific unity. But being a 
scheme supernatural, not even the first facts or prem- 
ises were included in our knowledge, as derived from 
our natural experience, and required therefore to be 
invented by us; and to suppose that our human facul- 
ties, breaking over the confines in this manner of all 
knowledge, could there build up, in the cloud-land of 
unknown, merely imagined fact, a sober, thoroughly 
coherent scheme of truth and renovating life, adjusting 
the infinite to the finite, law to mercy, discord and 
death to liberty and salvation, and setting all its grand 
array of facts, names, doctrines, and powers in a frame 
of solid and compact unity — such a supposition is too 
extravagant to be rationally entertained. It is suppos- 
ing that we are able to build, in the realm of fiction 
itself, a vaster and more solid economy of intellectual 
and practical truth, than has ever yet been built on the 
basis of experience. 

Three suppositions may be raised in regard to the 
matter in question; viz., that the work is all of man; 
that it is partly of man; and that it is all of God. The 
first of these we have discussed already ; for, if such a 
work could not be invented, much less could it be ac- 
complished by the hap-hazard process of myth and wild 


384 THIS COMPLETED SCHEME 


tradition. The second, which supposes, some central 
point of a supernatural plan being given — the fact, for 
example, of the incarnation — that this fact was wrought 
up by the human understanding, through a course of 
active development, into the complete scheme and per- 
fect unity we have described, need not be particularly 
discussed, because it allows the fact of a supernatural 
root and beginning, which is the principal matter in 
question. 

The third supposition is the only one that is ration- 
ally tenable; viz., that this grand out-birth of a new 
divine economy, called the gospel, is, in fact, super- 
natural, and stands in the compact order of a complete 
intellectual unity, because it was given by a compre- 
hending mind equal to the reach of the plan. Not that 
every thing written, or advanced in the canonical books 
of the New Testament, is historic fact, or infallible 
truth — our present supposition does not reach so far 
as that, but leaves a space to be filled up by other kinds 
of argument —it simply supposes that all such promi- 
nent ideas, tokens, facts, and doctrines as we have 
named —that is, every thing which goes to shape the 
new economy, as being integral to it—is brought into 
knowledge and published to the world supernaturally. 
And the proof is that already given; viz., that the con- 
sent of so many parts and tokens in one central fact and 
design, can not otherwise be accounted for, and is other- 
wise truly impossible. The human understanding may 
frame a theory out of data, or phenomena, supplied by 
experience ; it may scheme out a system or hypothesis, 
regarding matters known, that is coherent, and stands 
in the complete unity of reason ; but it isa very differ- 
ent thing to make up a supernatural kosmos of fact, 
doctrine, idea, relatively consistent, and converging, all, 


CAN NOT BE OF MAN 385 


on the common point of a spiritual renovation of souls. 
That, we may affirm with entire confidence, is not within 
the compass of any human power. 

Of this, too, we have abundant evidence, besides that 
which rests in any mere judgment of human capacity. 
The whole religious and mythologic history of the 
world is such evidence. In the first place, every pagan 
religion, every mythology, is in form a supernatural 
machinery; a fact which Mr. Parker and others who 
endeavor to reduce Christianity to a common footing 
with such mythologies, and so to a mere product of 
nature, have strangely overlooked. In the next place, 
what one of these pagan supernaturalisms has ever pro- 
posed the problem of salvation, or the deliverance of 
man from sin and the restoration of his divine con- 
sciousness ?— the only real problem, manifestly, that 
requires to be supernaturally solved. Again, what one 
of these mythologies proposes to erect the kingdom of 
God among men, or has any consistent and concentrated 
action bearing on that one result, or indeed on any 
other? What one of them, we may ask, even proposes 
a pure morality? So plainly impossible is it for man, 
or human history, to develop any intelligent and ration- 
ally harmonious scheme of supernaturalism. 

And yet we have more convincing proofs even than 
these. See what figure is made by Mormonism, Moham- 
medanism, and the Romish Church, all of which begin 
with supernatural conceptions, or data, furnished by 
Christianity. If we will ascertain what it is in man to 
do, in the way of composing supernatural verities, see 
what additions or amendments these have furnished. 
The new faith of Mormon pretends to be Christian still, 
only it is a more complete and finished form of the Chris- 
tian truth. But the ungodly and profane mummeries it 


386 THIS COMPLETED SCHEME 


has added, in the new revelations of the book, the new 
priesthood, and the new sainthood, all of which are 
boasted and accepted as improvements, it is very plain 
are only mockeries of all the practical aims of the gospel, 
and of the virtues it came to restore. Mohammedanism, 
borrowing from the Christian scriptures, proposes for its 
aim, to perfect in men a heavenly virtue. But the doc- 
trine of fatalism it establishes, forbids, at the outset, 
every struggle after such heavenly virtue, and the sen- 
sual paradise it promises, generates, as far as it goes, a 
habit opposite to every thing in the nature of that virtue. 

But these, it will be said, are not, in any proper sense, 
developments of the Christian supernaturalism, at which 
they begin; but tricks of knavery, or ravings of fanati- 
cism. Pass then to the Romish Church, and see what the 
venerable, slow-moving wisdom of ages can do. Here 
we meet the councils, age after age, in their high delib- 
erations. All the learning of the world, for many hun- 
dreds of years, is here concentrated. Heretical additions 
are here carefully scented, and promptly burnt out by the 
fires of purification. All determinations pass by debate, 
and sometimes by the debates of ages. The history isa 
process slow and laborious, like that which generates the 
common or the civil law; and the result is even called a 
development of Christianity. What then do we find? 
Is the glorious order and regenerative unity of the gospel, 
as a power of salvation, preserved and augmented, or is 
it overlaid and stifled, by a mass of antichristian inven- 
tions and corrupt traditions, that have really no agree- 
ment with it? And yet they are all introduced to give 
it greater effect. The exorcisms were to expel devils; 
but the solemn trifling of the ceremony only turned the 
disciple away from faith, to look after powers of magic. 
The amulets were to be pledges, on the person, of God’s 


CAN NOT BE OF MAN 387 


keeping and defense, against devils and all disasters; 
but these were accepted as charms also of magic. The 
sacrament itself of Christ’s body and blood, ordained to 
be the vehicle and sign of a co-operative grace to the 
recipient, must needs be farther intensified in its power, 
and, to this end, was transmuted into the very substance 
of Christ, by a perpetual miracle; which miracle, again, 
was taken as another feat of priestly magic, and watched 
as a pious incantation by the receiver. Celibacy and 
monastic retirement were to beget a higher and more 
superlative virtue; turning out, instead, to be only the 
scandal and disgust of the world. Pictures were added, 
to assist the mind in conceiving things high and remote; 
operating, instead, as a stricture upon it, and chaining 
it down to a new antichristian idolatry. Ascetic prac- 
tices were added, to chasten the soul and refine its spirit- 
ual fires; only kindling, instead, the fires of a new 
fanaticism. The way to Christ would be more easy, it 
was conceived, if his mother could be invoked to present 
the cause of the suppliant; and lo! Christianity becomes 
no more a gospel of life, but a fantastic scheme of Mari- 
olatry. A vicar of Christ was wanted, many thought, 
to represent him on earth, and be a visible mark for 
their faith; but the vicar displaced the principal, be- 
coming a mark, instead, of superstitious homage, and a 
receiver of deific honors. 

And thus we have a proof irresistible of what man 
can do, in the way of thinking out, or dressing up, a 
scheme of supernatural truth. Four or five common 
persons, without learning or culture, assisted by one 
other distinguished by higher advantages, have pre- 
sented, we have seen, such a scheme. All the parts 
they have set in harmony with each other, and made 
them crystallize into-the perfect unity of the plan. But 


388 THE SCHEME NOT OF MAN 


here we find all the great minds of the church, the 
learned, the wise, the prudent, and even the good, 
slowly elaborating their additions, or, as some will say, 
their developments, of the doctrine handed down to 
them, and producing just that which has no agreement 
whatever with its genuine import and the real move- 
ment it proposes — joining, as the classic poet says, a 
“horse’s neck to a man’s head,” and expanding the sim- 
ple, life-giving truth, into such theatrical pomps and 
scholastic wisdoms, that a cap and bells would scarcely 
be a less appropriate honor. 

What, then, have we to do, after such a reference as 
this, but to gather up all these prominent facts, ideas, 
names, and doctrines, which we have seen coalesce so 
perfectly in the central fact of a supernatural grace for 
the world, composing, when taken together, the total 
frame-work and complete virtuality of the gospel, and 
say that, in this secret and every where present water- 
mark, we read the signature of God? None but he 
could have organized this heavenly kosmos that we call 
the gospel. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE WORLD IS GOVERNED SUPERNATURALLY IN THE 
INTEREST OF CHRISTIANITY 


CHRISTIANITY, as planted by Christ, is a divine in- 
stitute in the world, the particular design of which is 
to act remedially, as against the mischiefs introduced 
by sin, and propagated by the retributive causes of 
nature. The Holy Spirit also is, by the supposition, a 
divine force or deific agency inaugurated in the world, 
to carry on, through all the coming ages, this same new- 
creating work. Now, as there is but one divine being 
or God, who is entered thus into so great a work, with 
tokens of feeling so impressively indicated, it follows 
by a very short inference, if indeed by any inference at 
all, that the one God of the world, governing it always 
accordantly with himself, must govern it in the interest 
of Christianity. Christianity, plainly, is either nothing 
to him, or else it is more than any secondary thing ; 
the hinge of his counsel, the mission of his love, the 
grand, all-inclusive, and eternal aim of his purposes. 
And if this be true, he will not govern the world in 
a way that forgets or overlooks Christianity, but will 
govern it rather for Christianity’s sake; which, again, 
is the same as to say that he will govern it by a super- 
natural regimen, even as Christianity itself is a super- 
natural institution. 

Exactly this, too, is the assumption of Christ him- 
self. He openly claims the government of the world, 
as being in his interest, or at the disposal of his cause 

389 


390 THE TWO KINDS 


and kingdom; saying — “all power is given unto me 
in heaven and in earth.” He is also declared by his 
apostle to have “ascended on high, leading captivity 
captive,” that he might be a dispenser of divine gifts 
in this manner; “for God hath set him at his own 
right hand, in the heavenly places, far above all princi- 
pality and power, and hath put all things under his 
feet, that he might be head over all things to the 
Church.” He also publishes, himself, a doctrine of 
prayer that supposes the same thing; or that, if any 
one will ask in his name, or as abiding in him and 
doing his will, he shall have his petition — guidance, 
light, deliverance, healing of the sick, support against 
enemies, power to work, patience to suffer — every 
thing that supposes the government to be enlisted, as 
a supernatural Providence, in the furtherance of his 
Christian welfare. 

Indeed we shall not sufficiently understand the 
Christian ideas of Providence, till we conceive it to 
be a twofold scheme of order and divine dispensation. 
Nature, in the first place, is a kind of Providence, being 
so adjusted as to meet all the future uses it can, as 
nature, meet. But it requires little insight, to per- 
ceive that it can not meet those uses that suppose a 
need of deliverance from nature. Manifestly nature 
can not rescue from the disorders, produced by a re- 
tributive action of her own causes. And if all God’s 
action were included in the operations of nature, noth- 
ing plainly could ever be done for man, as regards the 
wants of his sin, the cries of his repentance, or the 
struggles of his faith. Nature can throw him, and 
trample him, by her retributive causes, but she has no 
help to give him in rising, or rolling back her causes. 

On this subject of Providence, there is much of un- 


OF PROVIDENCE 391 


regulated thought and crude speculation. Thus it is a 
greatly debated question, whether there is a special, or 
only a general Providence? For it is conceived, by a 
certain class, that God has a special meaning or design, 
in some few things of their experience, and not in 
others. This plainly is a faith of credulity, and one 
that accommodates God to the measures of human 
ignorance. Another class, who assume to be more 
philosophic, holding a general, and denying a special 
Providence, only substitute an absurdity for a super- 
stition ; for what is a general Providence, that compre- 
hends no special Providence, but a generality made up 
of no particulars, that is, made out of nothing? The 
only intelligent conception is that every event is 
special, one as truly as another; for nothing comes 
to pass in God’s world without some particular mean- 
ing or design. And so the general Providence is 
perfect, because the special is complete. 

And yet even this is no sufficient conception of 
Providence. There is yet, after all, a real truth asso- 
ciated with the specialty view just stated, and covered, 
in part, by the scanty garb in which it is dressed; viz., 
that God is more warmly reciprocal with us and the 
struggles of our faith, in some things than in others — 
more reciprocal, that is, and closer to our want, and 
warmer to our feeling, in his supernatural Providence, 
than he is in his natural. 

The truth will be set in a more definite light, if we 
conceive, first of all, that nature is a kind of constant 
quantity and fixed term between us and God. It 
needed to be so, for many reasons. We could not even > 
keep our feet if the ground had no stable quality. We 
could do nothing in the way of industry, attain to no 
exercise of power; there would be no law, no science, 


— 892 PROVIDENCE NATURAL 


nothing to meet our intelligence; we could not act 
responsibly toward each other without some constant, 
calculable, or known medium between us. We could 
apprehend no retributive force in nature, waiting by 
the laws of obligation, to be their sanction. Even God 
himself would be a vague and desultory phantom, if he 
were not represented to us by the fixed laws and the 
orderly enduring processes of nature. Without these, 
even the light and shade of his supernatural mani- 
festation would be insignificant —just as the living 
play of a countenance would signify nothing, if it had 
no lines of repose at which the play begins, and into 
which it returns. 

But, while such is nature, it is yet, as we have seen, 
submitted, by its very laws, both to our supernatural 
action, and to that of God. As we act our liberty in it 
and upon it, never suspending or defrauding, even for 
a moment, any one of its laws, so it would be singular, 
if he could not do the same, and that upon a scale 
correspondent with the magnificence of his attributes. 
So, in millions of ways, at every minute, the courses of 
things may be touched by his will, and turned about, as 
the holy Poet says of the cloud, “to do whatsoever he 
commandeth upon the face of the earth.” By means 
of the constant element between us and God—limbered, 
though constant, to our common action — we are set in 
terms of reciprocity as living persons or powers, and 
are found acting, as toward each other, in a perpetual 
dialogue of parts. Taken thus, in the whole compre- 
hension of its import, our world is nothing but a vast, 
special, supernatural, reciprocal Providence, in which 

our God is reigning as an ever-present, ever-mindful 
~ counselor and guide and friend, a Redeemer of our sin, 
a hearer of our prayers. It is not that he, long time 


AND SUPERNATURAL 3893 


ago, put causes at work to meet our wants, and answer 
our prayers, but that he worketh hitherto. He is no 
dead majesty, but a living; and, if we want a special 
Providence, he is special enough to give us his recog- 
nition. He will even teach us how to pray, correcting 
our petitions to make them meet his counsel, and giv- 
ing us desires, leveled to the exact aim of his purposes ; 
even as the eagle teaches her young how to set their 
wings, and rest them on the air in flight. Not that he 
means, when speaking of things “agreeable to his will,” 
that we are merely to come, guessing at things already 
fixed, and trying to suit our petition to the motion of 
the wheel as it rolls, sliding it carefully in, at the right 
place, but that he will have us pray as in power; for it 
is agreeable to his will that we have power with God, 
and prevail— power to come and lay our hand on his, 
as his is laid on the world’s causes, and, by the suit of 
our want, emboldened by the acquaintanceship of our 
faith, to move that hand. And to just this end, as 
Christ himself teaches, all things in heaven and earth 
are submitted pliantly to him, so that, without shock or 
miracle, he can, if he will, turn them to his friendly and 
gracious purposes. The world and its affairs are so to 
become coefficients only of his gospel. 

Such is the conception Christianity holds of Provi- 
dence, or the providential government of the world — 
it is supernatural, it is Christly, and is to be relied upon 
ever, as a power operating for Christianity in the earth. 
Is the conception true, is it borne out by sufficient 
proofs? This, I shall now undertake to show. 

Let us note, in passing, however, as a fact introduc- 
tory, that just such a government, as respects the moce. _ 
would be wanted and really required, apart from any 
fall of sin; or work of deliverance from it. For, if 


394 APART FROM SIN, WE WANT 


there be only nature, with her constant quantities and 
endlessly propagated causes, if there be no divine super- 
natural agency in the world, then there is no conceivable 
footing of society, or social relationship with God left 
us. Nature, in such a scheme, is only a machine, and 
that machine is all that we have contact with. And if 
we should maintain our uprightness, holding on in 
ways of unfaltering obedience, we shall none the less 
want to know God, and have our society with him. 
But we get no terms of society in a machine, we can 
not seek unto a wall. Acting supernaturally ourselves, 
we need also to be supernaturally met and acted on. 
Without this, we have no terms of reciprocity with God 
more than with a volcano, ora tide of the sea. Society 
between us there is none. Society is rigidly definable, ~ 
as being a supernatural commerce between parties act- 
ing supernaturally. As between us and God, it is a 
doing and receiving ; if we do not sin, a righteousness 
looking up to God in confidence, and a smile of approval 
looking down to commend and bless. But if there be 
no such thing as a divine supernatural agency, then is 
no such footing of society conceivable. We exist asa 
solitary party. Nature is our cage, and the nearest 
approach we get to a recognition, is to find that we are 
shut up init. Is it so? Doany of us think it is so? 
Did we really believe it, what could our existence be 
but a conscious defeat and mockery, a longing that is 
objectless, a breathing without air ? 

But our state is not a state of sinless obedience. We 
have set the retributive causes of nature against us, and 
Christianity undertakes to be our deliverer. And the 
claim now is that the government of the world is super- 
naturally administered, so as to work with it. We 
allege, then, in evidence — 


A GOVERNMENT NOT MECHANICAL 395 


I. That facts do not take place here, in human society, 

- government, and the church, as they should, if events 

were left to the mere causalities of nature, and were no 

way controllable by a supernatural ministration of divine 

government, or by some genuinely Christian providence, 
in the management of human affairs. 

The fact of sin is palpable, and is shown. by evidences 
not to be questioned. What shock of disorder it must 
have given, or has in fact given, to the mundane kosmos, 
in all its parts, we have also shown. Taking now the 
supposition that there is nothing else but nature, and 
nature a scheme of universal cause and effect, that is, a 
machine, propagating its activities by its own organic 
laws, we ought to see no improvement, no advance, but a 

regular running down rather from bad to worse, and 
a final disappearance of all vestiges of order. Society 
and human capacity ought to sink away, universally, 
toward barbarism, and nature itself to grow weaker, 
more sterile, deeper in deformity and confusion. So it 
ought to be—speculatively viewed, or according to 
conditions of scientific order and law, nothing else could 
be. And yet we are just now taken with such con- 
fidence of progress in our human history, as to imagine 
that progress is even a prime law of natural develop- 
ment itself. In which we are doubtless right as regards 
the general fact of progress, (it is no fact as regards 
. the savage races,) but are only the more strangely 
blind to the higher fact, which that progress indicates ; 
viz., the regenerative action of supernatural forces, 
that, in spite of the downward tendency of mere nature 
under sin, are creating always a new heavens and earth, 
out of the ruins of the former beauty, and making even 
the losing experiences of evil, conditions of spiritual 
and social progress. Plainly no such progress ever 


396 THINGS DO NOT TAKE PLACE 


ought to be, or ever would be made, apart from the 
supernatural causes which are its spring. 

But there is a more deliberate way of testing this 
point, and a method of inquest that reaches farther. 
We turn ourselves to the courses and the grand events 
of human history, all that we include in the providen- 
tial history of the world—the wars, diplomacies, 
emigrations, revolutions, persecutions, discoveries, and 
scientific developments of the world —and we are im- 
mediately met by the appearance of some wonderful 
consent or understanding, between Christianity and the 
providential courses of things. Christianity is, in form, 
the supernatural kingdom and working of God in the 
earth. It begins with a supernatural advent of divinity, 
and closes with a supernatural exit of divinity ; and the 
divine visitant, thus entered into the world and going 
out from it, is himself a divine miracle in his own per- 
son; his works are miracles, and his doctrine quite as 
truly, and the whole transaction, taken as a movement 
on the world, or in it, that is not of it, supposes in fact 
a new and superior kind of administration, instituted 
by God himself. Accordingly, if it be true that God is 
in such a work, having all the highest and last ends of 
existence rested in it, he ought to govern the world, as 
we have already said, for it, and so as to forward this 
as the main interest included in it. 

Now whatever may be true, as respects the positive 
and direct evidence of such a fact, this, at least, is a 
matter that will strike any one as being truly remark- 
able, and, moreover, as being quite unaccountable, 
except on the ground of its truth, that Christianity has 
never been exterminated, but still lives, and even holds 
a reigning power at the head of all learning, art, com- 
merce, society, polity, and political dominion in the 


AS THEY OUGHT UNDER MERE NATURE 397 


earth. Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Zeno, Aristotle, 
Seneca, all these great founders and law-givers in 
the world of philosophy are gone ; the Academy and the 
Porch and all the schools that were gathered by the 
wisdom and the mighty and beautiful thought of these 
first minds of the world, are scattered ; but Jesus, the 
unlettered rustic, lives, and his simple words, distin- 
guished by no literary pretensions, and recorded only 
in the simplest and most fragmentary way, by the un- 
lettered men that eaught them, live also. Studied in 
deepest reverence, and expounded by all the richest, 
nicest learning of the world, and fed on by the praying 
souls of the faithful in all walks and conditions of life, 
they are continually gathering new followers, and com- 
posing a larger school, to which no inclosures of Acad- 
emy or Porch, nothing but kingdoms and continents, 
can think to give their name. Why now is it, that 
time and the world’s government conspire so power- 
fully with Jesus, and not with such a great and deeply 
cultured soul as Plato? Why with Christianity, and 
not with any proudest school of human opinion? All 
the mere human teachers are much closer to nature 
certainly than Jesus was, and if the world’s government 
is wholly natural, or in the interest of nature, it would 
seem to be a very plain inference that what belongs to 
nature will be most easily perpetuated. Why should a 
government, in the interest of nature, concur to en- 
throne and crown what is really supernatural ? 

Besides, nature, as we have seen, is a power acting 
retributively, in a process of self-chastisement and 
deterioration naturally endless, and upon this falling 
flood, or into it, Christianity settles, to grapple with its 
mad causations, and roll them back, and hush their ele- 
mental war, by its words of peace ; how then is it, that 


398 THINGS DO NOT TAKE PLACE 


a new, supernatural dispensation, which arrays itself, at 
all points, against nature and its penal disorders, erects 
upon the unsteady waters of so fickle and wild a sea, 
the only institution that for the last eighteen hundred 
years has been able to challenge the honors of perma- 
nence? If there be no power but nature, no government 
superior to the interest of nature, it certainly ought not 
to be so. On the contrary, whatever pretends to be 
supernatural, ought to die soonest, and show the great- 
est frailty—even as the pouring waters of Niagara 
may well enough keep on over the rapids, down the 
fatal leap, and no cessation make, even for millions of 
years ; whereas, the slender, light-trimmed vessel, that 
sets her sails for the ascent of those same rapids, ought 
not to stem them by one inch, and least of all, to 
become an institution in them, stiffly and steadily breast- 
ing the current for ages. And yet, if there were some 
Higher Providence governing those falls in the interest 
of the vessel, and not, as nature would, the vessel in 
the interest of the falls, then plainly it would no longer 
be absurd for that same frail craft to become an institu- 
tion, even halfway down the final leap itself. 

If it be suggested that other religions, such, for 
example, as Buddhism and Mohammedanism, are also 
supernatural in their form, and have survived, one of 
them a third longer, and the other two thirds as long, 
as Christianity, it is enough to reply, as regards the lat- 
ter, that all the forces of reality it had were stolen from 
Christianity, and that, in spite of these, it is now just 
upon the death ; and, as regards the former, that while 
its machineries are in form supernatural, it really under- 
takes to do nothing, as against the lapse and disability 
of nature, but rather settles into the same disorder 
with it, and takes a show of perpetuity, because it flows 


AS THEY OUGHT UNDER MERE NATURE 399 


with the current, and wins a kind of permanence 
which is only another name for the disability it creates. 
This is true of all the false religions; they belong to 
nature, and become constituent elements in that hell of 
disability which nature makes out of sin. Christianity 
rises, and raises its adherent races with it. These 
others fall, and finally die, when their adherent races 
die out of the world, assisting and hastening that event, 
each in its own way. When, therefore, we consider 
that Christianity goes directly into a conflict with 
nature, calling nature death, and engaging to combat 
the death by its regenerative power, and that still, after 
so many centuries, it holds on victorious, what shall we 
infer, with greater certainty, than that the government 
of the world is with it, in its interest, engaged to give 
it success? Without or apart from this fact, it plainly 
could not have held its ground, even for a single year. 
No! Christianity stands, and will, because the God of 
Christianity is the God of the world. The kingdom is 
not moved, and can not be, as it certainly should under 
a mere providence of natural causes, and that for the 
manifest reason, that all power in heaven and in earth 
is given into the hands of the king. And this brings 
us to a— 

II. Argument which is more general and more posi- 
tive, viz., this; that, if we could make a perfectly in- 
telligent survey of the great world’s history itself, and 
see how its principal events are turned, we should only 
discover the same thing on a larger scale; that the 
world itself is governed in the interest of Christianity, 
or the supernatural grace and kingdom of Jesus Christ. 
We plainly can not undertake any such review, for the 
reason that no human insight is equal to the task; but 
if we just glance along the inventory, so to speak, of 


400 PREPARATION OF 


the matters of this history, recalling chapters by their 
titles, and only having in mind the relation of so many 
things to the central figure, Christ and his kingdom, 
we shall find that, in his glorious person, we get the 
key by which their mystery and meaning are solved, 
their practical harmony expounded. 

Thus we have the Jewish dispersion, before Christ, 
in all the principal cities of the world, and the estab- 
lishment there of the synagogue worship ; so that, when 
the apostles go abroad with their message, they have 
places in which to speak made ready, assemblies gath- 
ered, and what is more than all, minds prepared by 
Jewish symbols and associations, to receive the mean- 
ing of the new gospel, as related to a first dispensation 
of law; without which, as we have seen, its true place 
in God’s economy is undiscovered; without which, too, 
it is bolted into the world, separately from all historic 
connections, and from all the evidences to be shown for it, 
by its fulfillment of ideas hid in ancient rites and forms. 

Next we observe that philosophy had just now culmi- 
nated among the Greeks and Romans, and was giving 
way as a force that is spent. The Sophists had run 
it into the ground. Faith in it was gone, and with 
that, all faith too in the gods of their religion. In this 
manner a deep and painful hunger was prepared, and 
multitudes of the most thoughtful minds were actually 
groping after the very food which Christ was to bring. 

At this time too the Greek tongue, which, for ages 
to come, was to be the general vehicle of thought and 
commerce between the peoples of the world, had be- 
come, to a great extent, the vernacular of the country, 
and a Gentile speech or medium was thus made ready, 
to receive and convey the grace that is given to the 
Gentiles. 


THE WORLD FOR CHRIST 401 


The Romans too are now masters of the country, and 
the Roman Empire, of which it is become an integral 
part is well nigh universal. When Christ therefore is 
crucified, it is, as it should be, the public act of the 
world, decreed by the Roman procurator in the name 
of the world. There is also now a more open state of 
society between the nations and races of mankind than 
was ever known before; because they are all, in fact, 
one empire. The apostles therefore may well enough 
go into all the world, as they are bidden, because the 
pass of a Roman citizen is good in all the world. 

It has also been noted as a remarkable fact, that 
when the Incarnate Word appears, it is a time of gen- 
eral peace; and it is remarkable, not only as a matter 
of poetic fitness, or esthetic propriety, but still more, 
in the deeper and more cogent sense of a practical 
necessity ; for if Christ had come, in the tumult of a 
time of war, his glorious, but gentle, appeal of truth 
and love would have been utterly drowned and lost. 
In the din of so great noise and passion, who could 
feel his want of a salvation? who be attracted by the 
beauty of a character? who descend to a cross to look for 
the Incarnate Word, and catch his mournful testimony? 

Take now these familiar facts, and what are they all 
but a visible preparation of human history for Christ, 
showing on how vast a scale the world is managed in 
the interest of Christ and his supernatural advent? 
Why else, too, do they all concur in time, when they 
might as well have happened centuries apart? Whence 
comes it that, when human history has been brewing in 
so great a ferment, for so many ages, all these great 
preparations should just now be ready, calling for the 
king with their common voice and saying — “ the full- 
ness of time is come” ? 


402 THE SUBSEQUENT HISTORY 


As it was with the events that preceded and prepared 
the gospel, so it has been with those which followed its 
publication. They give us their true sense and gauge 
of power, in the fact that they inaugurate a new era, 
called the Christian era. And what are we to see in 
the simple Anno Domini of our dates and superserip- 
tions, but that, for some reason, the great world-history 
has been bending itself to the lowly person of Jesus, 
from the hour of his miraculous advent onward through 
so many centuries of time. The Christian era! a 
new formation, speaking geologically, in the domain 
of human life and society! Christ, who is called by 
many the impossible, the incredible person, the gospeled 
carpenter raised into a mythic divinity —to him it is 
that the great world has so long bent itself, and dated 
its history from his year! So clearly is it signified, 
that the government of the world it waiting on Chris- 
tianity, and working in its interest, and is thus, in 
highest virtuality, a supernatural kingdom. 

The events themselves of the new era indicate the 
same thing. First, we hear Porphyry and other assail- 
ants of the gospel complaining, strangely, that their 
gods are grown dumb, refusing any more to heal, or 
give oracles. The Jewish unbelievers are smitten next 
with a token of discouragement even more appalling, 
in the terrible siege and dreadful overthrow of their 
Holy city; in which they are shown, as convincingly 
as possible, that God has brought their ancient specialty 
of theocratic rule and distinction to a full end — just 
that which even prophecy had foretold as the inaugural 
of a universal religion. After long and bitter persecu- 
tions, Constantine is finally enrolled as a convert, and 
Christianity takes the ascendant above all the gods of 
the empire. The northern hordes begin to pour down 


IS MANAGED FOR CHRIST 403 


the Alps, overrunning the distracted and worn-out civ- 
ilizations of the empire, and conquering, in fact, a re- 
ligion, by which they are themselves to be tamed and 
socially regenerated. The false prophet appears, propa- 
gating his new dispensation by the fierce apostleship of 
arms, and the world is to be shown what is the value 
of a triune grace and gospel, by a grand collateral ex- 
periment, in which both trinity and grace are wanting. 
The crusaders follow in successive repetitions of defeat 
and disaster; as if God’s purpose were to stamp it on 
the Christian sense of the nations, that Christianity is 
forbidden by the eternal proprieties of its mission, to 
strengthen itself by any victories but those of peace. 
The discovery of the mariner’s compass leads off the 
discoveries of Vasco de Gama and Columbus. Print- 
ing is invented, and the age of learning revived. This 
prepares the great Reformation of religion; for it, 
Luther; and for Luther, God so musters forces as to 
give him always civil protection, keeping him in for- 
tress, and compelling even the combined fury of kings 
and kingdoms to pass by harmless. The Puritans are 
driven out of England, to plant their gospel of liberty 
and light on the shores of a new world. Cromwell 
breaks down the monarchy, to inaugurate, in England, 
religious toleration; so to regenerate the laws and 
political liberties of the English nation. The Ameri- 
can Revolution, followed by the federal constitution, 
fulfills the Christian aim of Puritanism, and lays all 
claims and titles of legitimacy at the feet of human 
liberty and progress. The wars of Napoleon follow, 
by which the oppressive dynasties of Europe are broken 
up or shattered, to jet in the light of a new age of 
improvement. The revelations of Christian science, 
meantime, are uncovering and transforming the world, 


¢ 


404 THE SUBSEQUENT HISTORY 


tenfolding its forces and uses, and all that constitutes 
its value, ina single generation. The grand commercial 
apostleship of steam and telegraph, hurrying the inter- 
course and shortening the distances of the ends of the 
world, fixes the superiority of the Christian nations, 
and prepares the speedy sovereignty of the Christian 
ideas. 

What now do we distinguish in these facts but an 
outstanding, world-wide proof of the truth we just now 
stated, that the government of the world is in the in- 
terest of Christianity, and so far is itself a really con- 
tinuous supernatural administration? These events 
are a kind of providential procession that we see, 
marching on to accomplish the one given result, the 
universal and final ascendancy of Jesus Christ. They 
march, too, in the beat of time, preserving their right 
order, and appearing, each, just when it is wanted, not 
before or after. When has it ever been seen that the 
government of the world was conspiring, in this large 
historic way, across the distance of remote ages, with 
any merely natural man, his teachings, or plans, or 
work? Whatever else may be true, this at least is 
plain, that between Christianity as a fabric all-super- 
natural, concerned for nothing but to do a supernatural 
work, and the world as mere nature, suffering nothing 
above nature to be, there ought to be, and indeed never 
could be any such concurrence. Besides, the progress 
indicated by these facts is plainly impossible on the 
footing of mere nature; for nature, under sin, becomes, 
we have seen, a grand destructive causality rather, such 
as, running by its own mechanical laws, can of course 
breed no result of self-restoration, but must run itself 
downward, instead, into a worse and more fatal deteri- 
oration. 


IS MANAGED FOR CHRIST 405 


But it will be imagined by some that these are facts 
which we obtain by gleaning; that, meantime, there is 
an abundance equally copious of adverse facts, such as 
have no concurrence with the gospel of Christ, but 
seem, instead, to offer only hindrance. What account, 
for example, can we make, of the dark ages so called, 
and of the confessedly base corruptions that have been 
allowed to overrun Christianity, as a doctrine of faith 
and salvation ? 

To this I answer, that, by this question, rightly 
viewed, is opened one of the most fruitful and convinc- 
ing chapters of Christian evidence ; showing, as no other 
does, that Christianity is upheld by nothing but the 
fact that the government of the world is with it. 
What could follow but a corruption of Christianity, at 
the beginning, from our very belief in it? for by our 
faith we bring ourselves to it, as a contribution ; con- 
tributing, of course, our misbegotten opinions, our con- 
fused passions, our habits, prejudices, weaknesses of 
every kind, and so infusing our poison, more or less 
hurtfully, into that which saves us; even as the patient 
will communicate his plague to his physician, or the bad 
wine give its smell to the jar into which it is poured. 
The disciple will as certainly give his form to Chris- 
tianity, when he preaches it, or commends it, as he will 
receive a regenerated life from it. The new gospel, 
accordingly —it could not be otherwise — will go into 
a grand process of corruption, at first, such as will per- 
chance be called improvement, and the problem of his- 
tory will be to settle and discriminate the truth, by 
winnowing out the forms of human error and corrup- 
tion from it. Without some process of this kind, it 
could never be seen what really belongs to the gospel, 
and what to the unwisdom and unbelief of those in 


406 THE DARK AGES 


whom it dwells. As the gospel was revealed to sin, so 
there was a different kind of necessity that the gospel 
should be revealed experimentally through sin. Man, 
the believer, must, in other words, be allowed to try his 
hand upon it, and make it his gospel — make it wiser by 
his philosophy, stronger by his regal patronage, more 
conspicuous and stately by the paraphernalia of forms 
and the robed officials he may dress up for its due 
embodiment. 

This is that mystery of iniquity that an apostle saw, 
even in his time, beginning to work; which he said 
must work, till it should be taken out of the way. 
This is that falling away first, that must come, the man 
of sin that must be revealed. It is not the papacy, 
exactly, but that which made the papacy ; viz., faith, 
not able, without a severe schooling, to mind the dis- 
tinction between a subjection to and a supervision of 
the gospel; for, in becoming responsible for it as a ser- 
vant, what will the new believer more certainly do than 
take it in charge, patronize it, mend it, that is, disfigure 
and hide it? And there will be no limit to this wrong. 
Unable to stay content with the humble guise and the 
simple doctrine of the cross, he will exalt himself un- 
wittingly above what is called God in the work, and 
will go on to be so grand a supervisor, that finally, as 
his sins are added to the forwardness of his service, we 
shall begin to see that he has contributed his whole 
self, and even taken God’s seat, in his preposterous am- 
bition ; becoming first the minister, then the vicar, and 
last of all, to give a true name, the usurper of God’s 
authority. Christianity is now in his charge, and is not 
improved by his additions. Disappointment follows ; 
this compels a reconsideration, this a reformation, and 
so the true gospel is finally restored, with its reasons 


ACCOUNTED FOR 407 


only certified by the human abuse through which it has 
passed, and the lines of contrast drawn by so many 
miserable corruptions. 

Thus, at a very early period, we hear such men as 
Justin and Clement of Alexandria, proposing to give 
the Christian doctrine the dress of a philosophy, and 
find them earnestly at work to accomplish a point of so 
great consequence, imagining that so it will be more 
able to command the respect of the learned, and will 
better satisfy the want of the world. The work goes 
on, till, at last, some centuries of dialectic industry may 
be said to have completely finished all that could be done, 
when lo! the beautiful, life-giving truths of Christ, 
offered by him to faith, are converted into a dry, scho- 
lastic jingle, addressed to speculative reason, without 
value even to that, and as easily rejected as embraced. 
Monasticism and vows of celibacy are added in the same 
way, to give Christianity, in certain special examples, 
the advantage of a more superlative virtue than God had 
planned for, in the practical relations of life ; finally to 
result in corruptions too monstrous ever to have been 
gendered in those relations. Constantine, having be- 
come a disciple, must needs contribute not his person 
only, but all the power of his throne, to the gospel, 
expecting in that manner to make it partake of his 
imperial pre-eminence, and become strong by a strength 
thus contributed. Uniting it, in this manner, to the 
state, he not only stays the woes of persecution, but he 
lifts the church into a rank of political ascendancy ; 
which is the same as to say that he dooms it, for ages 
to come, to be the mother of all unholy arts and oppres- 
sions, and the source of unspeakable public miseries. 
Gregory the Great can find no rest to his prayers, till 
the church is consolidated under the acknowledged 


408 THE DARK AGES 


primacy of St. Peter; and when it is done, he may fitly 
rest in his prayers, having made the church such an 
organ of abuses, oppressions, and religious woes, as the 
world had never seen before, and never will see again. 
Images and pictures are at length set up in the holy 
places, under the fair pretense that they are needed to 
represent the spiritual truths of religion to the eye, and 
so to accommodate the apprehension of weak and igno- 
rant minds. And then, finally, behold! as the fruit of 
so great an improvement, whole nations of people wor- 
shiping the images, and before them transformed into 
nations of idolaters ! 

_ So the mystery works, and so the true gospel is becom- 
ing distinguished from the false, the gospel of the Son 
of God from man’s gospel of additions, improvements, 
and airy conceits. As Christ revealed his gospel by 
communication, so here it is revealed again, as it needs 
must be, by the light and shade of historical experiment ; 
settled, or adjusted, or practically defined, by use and 
abuse. These facts appear to be entirely adverse to 
Christianity. They are so, and, in that, have their 
value. That the government of the world, therefore, 
has passed by on the other side, and let Christianity 
fall in these facts, we are not to suppose. Being a gift 
to human liberty, it could not otherwise be established. 
When the experiment is finished, then the Divine Word 
will burst up into a second coming, through the human 
incrustations, consuming by his breath and destroying 
by his brightness, the accumulated wisdoms and pomps 
of his mistaken followers. In all these losing agencies, 
there is yet no loss. The dark ages we speak of are 
yet in no backward motion. Still the march of Chris- 
tian history is onward. If these bad impediments were 
not already raised, why, then they were yet to be raised. 


ACCOUNTED FOR 409 


Just so far on its way to the state of universal domin- 
ion is the gospel and supernatural kingdom of Jesus 
Christ. 

Still there have been events, it must be admitted, in 
what is called Christian history, which are darker and * 
more difficult of solution. They appear, at first view, 
to have no place under a scheme of providential govern- 
ment, such as we are now supposing. And yet, if we 
could hold a longer reach of times, and seize the connec- 
tions of history with a broader grasp of intelligence, 
they might fall into place and become as transparent, 
under such a scheme, as any other. As it is, we can 
only suggest possibilities, and start guesses, and rest 
till our faculties grow to the dimensions of the subjects. 
What does it mean, for example, that the Jesuits and 
the Council of Trent were able to stop, or set a limit to, 
the Reformation of the church? We cannot answer, 
and probably shall never know. Like all evil, it may 
be referrible to the necessary scope of human liberty. 
Or it may be that the Reformation itself was a thing 
too incomplete and partial to be allowed a sweep of 
universal triumph. It might have been a great disaster 
to the religion of Christ to be resolved into a mere 
Reformationism, and left confronted by no antagonistic 
force. Why, again, was it, or how, that the churches of 
Northern Africa were allowed to be overrun by barba- 
rians, and finally, in the loss of their faith, to give way 
utterly, and fall into extinction, before a barbarous reli- 
gion? Was it that occasional examples of loss and 
retrocession must be suffered, in order to the enforce- 
ment of a just responsibility for the gospel in its adhe- 
rents and followers, otherwise ready to assume that, 
having God for its author, it will take care of itself? 
This we can not answer, but we can without difficulty 


410 ADVERSE FACTS 


imagine it to be so. Why, again, were the French 
Huguenots, the religious hope and glory of their time, 
suffered to be butchered or expelled the kingdom? 
Was it that so many great and noble men might endan- 
‘ger again the simplicity of the truth, and could only 
give their most valuable testimony for Christ by their 
death or exile? Or was it that Calvinism itself, pre- 
paring, at this time, to establish a new type of individ- 
ualism under its doctrine of an electing and special 
grace, and so to inaugurate a new state of ecclesiastical 
and civil liberty, might have stiffened, having God’s 
decrees all with it, into a form of Christian absolutism 
too closely resembled to the faith of Mohammed, and 
must needs be tempered, therefore, in this manner, by 
the experience of a predestinating counsel opposite, 
shaking even it to its fall? Or, if we ask why it is 
that so great decay of faith is suffered in Germany and 
in the Christian world generally, at the present time? 
why it is that learning is turned against the gospel, to 
explain it away, or reduce it to the terms of nature and 
speculative reason? the question may be dark to many, 
and may seem to admit no satisfactory answer. Still, 
to any one who has thought deeply, it will be something 
to ask whether it was possible for the principle of faith 
ever to be set in its true post of honor, till the relations 
of nature and the supernatural are settled by a thorough 
discussion, such as brings every truth of Christianity 
into question ? 

On the whole, we discover nothing, in any of these 
darkest and most adverse facts of history, to shake our 
conviction that the world is governed, as we said at the 
beginning, in the interest of the incarnation or super- 
natural advent of Jesus Christ. Almost all the great 
staple events of history reveal this fact, in forms of pal- 


PROBABLY CONSISTENT 411 


pable evidence, and if in some it seems to be less plain, 
there yet is nothing in them to dislodge our faith, even 
fora moment. Besides, we have always before us the 
one majestic fact that Christianity still lives. The 
shurch, being a supernatural institution, all history 
bends to it, and it proves its sublime peculiarity in the 
fact that it is forever indestructible by time and its 
changes. The schools of Pythagoras, and all the great 
teachers after him, have flourished for a day, and van- 
ished — tokens, all, of the necessary frailty of mere 
natural wisdom — but the church of Jesus Christ, the 
Nazarene teacher, stands from age to age. It began 
with a feeble knot of disciples, it has spread itself over 
a vast field or kingdom, including in its ample scope all 
the foremost nations and peoples of the world. Perse- 
cution has not crushed it, power has not beaten it 
back, time has not abated its force, and, what is most 
wonderful of all, the abuses and treasons of its own 
friends have never shaken its stability. Mohammedan- 
ism, punctually served and to the letter, by the bigoted 
fidelity of its adherents, grows old and dies in a much 
shorter time. Christianity, betrayed, corrupted, made 
to be the instrument of unutterable woes, by its disci- 
ples, is yet forbidden to die. God will not let the dis- 
sensions, the treasons, the unutterable and abominable 
profligacies, that are mortal to the life of other institu- 
tions, have any power of death upon it; upholding it 
visibly himself, and showing by that sign, as he could 
by nothing else, that the settled purpose of his will 
is to establish it as the universal religion. 

But the government of the world includes, in its 
largest view, the interior history of souls. Before we 
arrive at Christianity, therefore, what we there call the 
domain of the Spirit, and of spiritual experience, is to 


412 THE INTERNAL GOVERNMENT 


be classed under providential history. We cite, there- 
fore, in this connection, 

III. As a distinct argument, the spiritual changes 
wrought in men, and the testimony given by the sub-\~ 
jects of such changes. Nothing is better attested than 
the fact that men of our race, whether under Christian- 
ity, or without any knowledge of its truths, do undergo 
changes of character and life, that can no way be, 
accounted for, without some reference to a supernatu- 
ral power, such as Christianity affirms in the doctrine 
of the Spirit. The subjects themselves can nowise 
account for the change, except by the supposition of a 
divine agency in them, superior to the laws of natural 
development, and also to any force of will they could 
themselves exert on their own dispositions, and the 
moral habit of their previous life. 

To change the type of a character and, above all, to 
do it in such a manner, that, from and after a given 
date, it shall be confessedly different, more widely dif- 
ferent than if a thief were to become suddenly hon- 
est, a licentious man suddenly and delicately pure, a 
violent gentle, a cowardly heroic —this, it will be 
agreed, is a thing most difficult to be accomplished. 
Many will even declare it to be impossible ; nothing 
more is possible, they will say, than for the subjects to 
set their will to a reformation, which doubtless they 
may do, at any given moment, but, in doing it, how far 
off are they still from any change of character; persist- 
ing against what struggles of perverse habit, heaving 
spasmodically under what loads of corruption, ready to 
fall again, how easily, back into what has all the while 
been and still is their character. But if they do, per- 
chance, succeed in finally changing any thing, how 
slowly must the change be wrought—even as one 


OF SOULS IS WITH CHRIST 413 


habit gives way to another, by a long and wearisome 
reiteration of practise. Exactly so it is, we admit, 
with all changes in mere natural character, all improve- 
ments in the plane of the natural life. If there is no 
force but mere will, acting in this plane, to change us, 
there can be no sudden reverse of character ; no reverse 
at all, which is more radical than what the phrenolo- 
gists give us to expect, when they set us on courses of 
practise, to increase or diminish given lobes of brain 
under the bony casement of the skull. Whoever 
undertakes any such improvement of his character, in a 
bad point, doing it by his will, we expect to see relapse 
and fall back. We have a way indeed of saying, “ it is 
in him,” when a bad man is repressing his particular 
sin; by which we mean to intimate our conviction 
that what is in him will assuredly come out and show 
itself, even more flagrantly than ever. Thus we rea- 
son, and we are right in it, if no account be made of 
faith and the influence of a supernatural power. 

Thus it was that Celsus reasoned, utterly denying 
the credibility of any sudden change of character from 
bad to good, such as the Christians spoke of ; for, not 
being in the faith of Christ, he had no conception of 
the supernatural efficacy embodied in his plan of salva- 
tion. He says, “those who are disposed by nature to 
vice, and accustomed to it, can not be transformed by 
punishment, much less by mercy; for to transform 
nature is a matter of extreme difficulty.” He did not 
understand, alas, what “merey” is. But Origen does. 
Having it revealed in him, by his own holy experience, 
he replies, how beautifully, “« When we see the doctrine 
Celsus calls foolish, operate, as with magical power, 
when we see how it brings a multitude, at once, from 
a life of lawless excesses to a well-regulated one, from 


414 THE INTERNAL GOVERNMENT 


unrighteousness to goodness, from timidity to such 
strength of principle, that, for the sake of religion, 
they despise even death, have we not good reason for 
admiring the power of this doctrine?” 

The picture given by Justin Martyr corresponds; at 
once proving itself by its own beauty, and revealing 
the hand of the divine Spirit, by whom it is wrought. 
“ We, who once were slaves to lust, now delight in pu- 
rity of morals ; we, who once prized riches and pos- 
sessions above all things, now contribute what we have 
to the common use ; we, who once hated and murdered 
each other, and, on account of our differences, would not 
have a common heart with those of the same tribe, now 
live in common with them, and pray for our enemies, 
and endeavor to persuade those who hate us unjustly, 
that, living according to the admirable counsels of Christ, 
they may enjoy a good hope of obtaining the same bless- 
ings with ourselves, from God the ruler of us all.” 

That changes such as these are sometimes wrought 
in men and societies of men, under the gospel of Christ, 
we certainly know. There is almost no one who has 
not, sometime, witnessed such examples. And yet, 
where communities are taken, the results will be so far 
mixed by cases of spurious faith, of hypocrisy, of back- 
sliding, and apostasy, as to blur and sadly confuse the 
evidence displayed. Our best and least ambiguous ex- 
amples of spiritual renovation, therefore, will be found 
in the case of individual persons. 

The case of Paul is familiar, and it is remarkable that 
no other ancient human character comes to us attested, 
in its genuineness, by such evidence. Whatever the 
learned critics say, or assume to show, concerning the 
gospels, there is certainly no myth in the epistles. 


1 Neander’s Mem. Christ. Life, p. 17. 2Tb., p. 61. 


OF SOULS IS WITH CHRIST 415 


When they come to these, their theory breaks down, 
their occupation is gone. That such aman as Pliny 
lived, and such a man as Cicero, is not as well attested, 
or shown by as ‘good evidence, as that Paul the apostle 
lived, wrote the epistles ascribed to him, and bore the 
double character, first, of a persecutor and fierce enemy of: 
the cross, then, by the grace of God revealed in him, that 
of a preacher of the cross; sacrificing all things, enduring 
all pains and severities, for the name of Christ, his Master. 
This change, he tells us, was a change supernaturally 
wrought, gives us the day and the hour on which his bad 
career was stopped, and shows himself to us and all the 
world, from that moment onward, to be another man. 
From a most bitter and relentless persecutor, he has be- 
come a believer in Christ, the most powerful, and chief 
advocate of his gospel. A profound self-evidence verifies 
the man and the change, and the divine life in him is not 
less visible. His own account of the change, which he 
testifies openly in every place, is that, “by the grace of 
God,” he is what he is—‘“ new-created in Christ Jesus 
unto good works.” 

And of such examples the church is full, in all ages. 
By some wondrous Providence in souls, if we do not 
accept the Christian mystery of the Spirit,a stream of 
new-creative power from God is entering into men’s 
hearts, transforming their lives, and. with this one 
uniform result, that, if Christianity is a fiction or a myth, 
it makes them as certainly its friends and disciples, as it 
makes them better and more akin to God. 

Augustine, for example, was, before his conversion, a 
less violent and bloody man than Paul, had far less 
pretense of virtue, and a much feebler sense of princi- 
ple, and was in fact a really less hopeful person, as 
regards the prospect of his becoming a holy character. 


416 THE INTERNAL GOVERNMENT 


And yet, from a given moment, onward, which moment 
is exactly specified in his ‘“ Confessions,” he becomes 
another character. Neither can it be said that he was 
turned about thus suddenly by some fit of superstition. 
He was not a superstitious character, but a loose, free- 
thinking, sensual person, whose habit was opposed to 
the spiritualities in every form. His own account 
of his conversion is that it was the prayers of his 
saintly mother which took hold of him, drawing down 
upon him, from above, that divine influence and grace, 
by which his life was so remarkably changed. We can see 
too, for ourselves, in his whole subsequent life, his action, 
his temper, his great and massive thoughts, his burning 
contemplations, that he is lifted above his natural force, 
to be a man above himself. The rhetorician is gone, 
and the apostle has taken his place. 

The conversion of Raymond Lull, of Col. Gardiner, 
of John Newton, of Dr. Nelson, and of hundreds whom 
we know, as our living contemporaries in the church, 
corresponds. The number is so great in fact, examples 
of the kind so familiar, that any attempt to specify 
names must be insignificant. A great many supposed 
changes of the kind turn out, as we admit, to have no 
sound reality and are followed by no correspondent 
change of life. It would be so as a matter of course ; 
just as there will be spurious examples of honesty, 
honor, and courage. But the spurious no more dis- 
proves the true in one case, than in the other. The 
question is simply this, whether, in given cases, we do 
not see men entered, more or less suddenly, by what is 
called their conversion, into another and different kind 
of life; the violent becoming gentle, the deceitful true, 
the covetous unworldly and liberal, the selfish benevo- 
lent and self-denying, profanity changed to prayer, 


QF SOULS [tS WITH CHRIST 417 


drunkenness to sobriety, revenge to long-suffering, 
blood-thirstiness to love and compassion ; the subject 
becoming thus, in truth, from that time onward, a con- 
fessedly new man, in all these his several habits and 
relations? We are all familiar, certainly, with such 
examples. They are among the most prominent and 
impressive facts, in the interior, personal history of 
mankind. And they are so well attested, in myriads 
of cases, by the practical results of the life, as to make 
the unbelief which denies their verity, or classes them as 
examples of spiritual illusion, a prejudice that amounts 
to weakness, or supposes a real incapacity for evidence. 

Now in these changes of spiritual experience, called 
conversions, the Christian word, and the truths of the 
life of Jesus, are commonly supposed to have an impor- 
tant instrumentality. The subjects uniformly say it, in 
the confessions they witness. They suppose that God, 
revealed in Christ, is so, by a transmission inward, re- 
vealed in their consciousness. But if Christ was only 
a simple, natural man, and if all which is reported of 
him in the gospels, transcending the supposition of his 
simple humanity, is wild excess, or legendary exaggera- 
tion, the account which refers these inward changes or 
conversions to Christ, can hardly be true. That any 
mere illusion should be followed, age after age, by such 
wondrous and manifestly real changes, making human 
souls visibly akin to God, is not to be supposed. That 
would be to account for the soundest and profoundest 
facts of human history, by referring them to causes 
most purely fanciful, and doctrines wide of all true 
intelligence. 

Here then we find ourselves, with these facts on our 
hands, without any Christian truth to account for them. 
For when we have dismissed the gospels, or thrown 


418 MEN ARE NOT CONVERTED 


them aside as unreliable, or incredible, these facts are 
not annihilated. These converts, these transformed men 
— the grandest truths, and most quickening powers, and 
most glorious characters, in human history —are still 
left, living and blooming and blessing their times, for 
all these eighteen centuries. They certainly are no fic- 
tions, or myths, or fables of tradition. They testify, all, 
that they are consciously transformed by some divine 
power. A kind of gospelis inthem. God has wrought 
in them, if Christianity has not. Only it is remarkable 
that when they are so transformed by his inner visita- 
tion, they immediately declare for Christ, and cleave 
to him with ineradicable affection. We seem thus, in 
fact, to discover that, as we are casting Christianity 
away, the government of the world is turning the in- 
most heart of the repenting and holy toward it, and 
giving, in that manner, indisputable evidence that it is 
itself willing, whether we are so or not, to serve in the 
interest of Christianity. 

It does not appear to have been as carefully considered 
as it should be, by the disciples of naturalism, in what 
manner these converts, and the testimony they give, is 
to be disposed of. For, in our view, they are even a 
more intractable subject to handle, than the gospels 
themselves. To deny the reality of their change, and 
reduce their whole life and experience to a matter of 
illusion, requires a degree of effrontery and personal 
conceit, that would repel any critic of only ordinary in- 
telligence. For in these Christian myriads are grouped 
almost all the greatest scholars, philosophers, and law- 
givers, the most revered and stateliest names, the most 
beautiful and holiest characters of Christendom. 

It can not be said that these conversions are, in any 
sense, natural, or produced by natural causes, in the 


BY NATURE OR BY SELF-WILL 419 


feeling and condition of the subjects. Their affinities 
are all visibly transcendent, and their life itself is, in 
one view, a kind of protest against nature and with- 
drawment from it. 

They are not changed, in this manner, by their own 
mere will. Whoever believes that a mortal man can 
take hold of the moral jargon, into which his thoughts 
and passions are cast by sin, willing himself back, item 
by item, into peace and harmony and the ennobled con- 
sciousness of good, ought to be able to believe in Chris- 
tianity much more easily. A bad man may reduce, or 
hold in check, the evil instigations of his habit, by his 
mere will; he may even drag himself into positive acts 
of duty and observance, and become a sturdy legalist 
in the practices of virtue; but to bring himself out into a 
luminous, joyous, and spontaneous virtue, and make him- 
self free in good, as having the principle installed in his 
heart, is a different thing. Nothing, in short, is wider 
of all rational belief, than that the converted men or 
disciples of Christianity could make the beginning, act 
the part, fashion the character, kindle the fires and con- 
quer the elevations visibly displayed in their life, doing 
it by their human will. 

But there is a certain inspiration, it may be said, that 
flows into men, from the ideas they assume. Thus, it 
may be conceived that the supposed convert, in these 
remarkable transformations of life and character, re- 
ceived, first, a theological preconception, that a change 
thus and thus described is necessary to his salvation ; 
and then, having his imagination powerfully excited, by 
the struggles of supposed guilt and danger he is in, he 
conceives, at last, that the change required is actually 
passed upon him ; whereupon he is set forward in high 
impulse, into a new style of life, correspondent with the 


420 THEY ARE NOT CONVERTED 


auspicious hallucination that has triumphed over his 
sin. And this is really the most plausible account that 
can be made of these changes in the interior history of 
souls, which does not suppose them to be referrible to a 
supernatural divine agency or Providence. : 

But what kind of mind is it that can be satisfied with 
one of its wise inventions, when, to account for the high- 
est and divinest range of fact in man’s spiritual history, 
it supposes whole myriads of the strongest minds, and 
noblest characters, to have been inspired with so much 
goodness all their lives long, by a hallucination ? 

In the next place, we are led to inquire, why it is 
that men pass no such crisis of inspiration in other 
matters? Whence comes it, that, having formed some 
preconception of honesty, truth, purity, wisdom, art, the 
auspicious hallucination that it is to shape their trans- 
formation does not suddenly take them up, as here, and 
carry them forward into the inspired liberty? Why do 
not men become heroes, poets, lawgivers, in this man- 
ner? Have they not thoughts enongh of being thus 
distinguished? and are not such kind of thoughts, in 
them, commonly hallucinations? 

But it is not true, in a very great multitude of cases, 
that any such preconception has been taken up. What 
thought had Paul, on the way to Damascus, of being 
converted to Christ as the necessary condition of his 
salvation? As little had Augustine, till his mind was 
opened from within to such a thought. Besides, we 
have multitudes of cases in our own time, where any 
such manner of accounting for the change of character 
actually wrought is plainly inadequate; cases, for ex- 
ample, where there is too little of personal vigor to carry 
out any preconception, even if a beginning were made in 
that manner. Thus a ministerial acquaintance, whose 


BY THEIR PRECONCEPTIONS 421 


name is before the nation and the world, as a public 
name, had living in the place where he was pastor, a 
short-witted person, generally taken for an idiot, who, 
in addition to his natural disadvantages, was deep in 
the vices of profanity and drunkenness. At a time of 
general attention to the things of religion, this forlorn 
_ being came to him to inquire the way of salvation. The 
first impulse of prudence was to put him off, as being 
incapable of religious experience, and as one who would 
only turn it into mockery by his absurdities. On farther 
consideration, it was found to be rather a duty to give 
him even the greater attention, according to the propor- 
tion of his want. In a few days, it became a subject 
of mirth, with all the light-minded class of the commu- 
nity, that this man wasa convert. The Christian people 
looked on him with pity, and were silent; they had no 
hope of him. But from that hour to this—and many 
years have now passed away — he has never faltered in 
his course, never yielded so much as an inch to his 
vicious habits. His constancy and consistency are even 
as much superior to that of other disciples, as his sim- 
plicity is greater than theirs. He is always in his place. 
He has worn out two or three Bibles, for he had before 
learned to read a little, and now put himself to the task 
in earnest. He gets a few dollars of earnings, which 
he does not want, and goes to his pastor, requesting 
him to apply it to some good use, which he does not 
know how to select. When asked by his friends — for 
that is the general wonder — how it is that his old 
habits of profanity and drunkenness have never once 
gotten advantage of him, his uniform reply is, “ Why, I 
have seen Jesus!” The critic of naturalism can not, of 
course, admit any such mystic notion as that — Jesus 
was a man, and, if he is any thing now, he is still a 


422 IN MANY CASES 


man. Will he account for such a character, initiated 
by a sudden change, by supposing a preconception that 
shapes it, and maintains it against infirmities so great, 
for such a course of years? There is a much deeper 
and more adequate philosophy in the subject himself. 
Take his own account of it, and the fact is possible ; 
take this other, and it is not. 

There are multitudes of cases also, in every age, 
where heathens who have never heard of Christ, or of 
any terms of salvation at all, and sometimes even the 
rudest of heathens, are passed into a manifestly new 
character, by a change correspondent, in every respect, 
with what is called conversion under the gospel. And 
if God, as we maintain, is reigning supernaturally over 
the world and in it, to establish and complete the king- 
dom of his Son, what shall we look for but to find 
sporadic cases of conversion, or spiritual illumination, 
even among the heathen peoples, before the knowledge 
of Christ is received ? 

Socrates is best conceived in this manner, and, ac- 
cording to his own impressions, he was guided super- 
naturally, by a secret grace and ministry, in whose 
teaching he received all that most distinguished his 
personal history. Clement of Rome, as we have already 
observed, was a man mysteriously led, as by some 
divine impulse, and appears to have come into the spirit 
of a new-born life, before he had even heard of Christ. 
In him, therefore, his heart instantly rested, finding 
there the grace that he wanted, and the divine beauty 
that he already longed for. 

And what forbids that we include in the reckoning 
examples of a class more wild, where it is impossible to 
suspect any distemper of the experience, under precon- 
ceptions imposed, either by philosophy or by the 


THERE ARE NO PRECONCEPTIONS 423 


gospel — such, for example, as the strange devotee dis- 
covered by Brainard, among the children of the forest, 
and called by him “the conjurer”? “He said,” so 
Brainard represents, “that God had taught him his 
religion, and he wanted to find others who would join 
heartily with him in it. He believed God had some 
good people somewhere, who felt as he did. He had 
not always felt as now, but had formerly been like the 
rest of the Indians till about four years before that 
time. Then his heart, he said, was much distressed, so 
that he could not live among the Indians, but got away 
into the woods and lived alone there for months. At 
length, he said, God comforted his heart, and showed 
him what he should do, and since that time he had 
known God, and tried to serve him, and loved all men, 
be they who they would, so as he never did before.” 

Brainard was also told by the Indians, “that he 
opposed their drinking strong liquor with all his power, 
and that if, at any time, he could not dissuade them 
from it, he would leave them and go crying into the 
woods. He was looked upon and derided, among most 
of the Indians, as a precise zealot, who made a needless 
noise about religious matters. There was something 
in his temper and disposition which looked more like 
true religion, than any I have ever observed among 
other heathens.” 4 

In the same manner, a forlorn woman, discovered by 
one of our missionaries, in the depths of Central Africa, 
is reported by him to have broken out, in the most 
affecting demonstrations of joy, when Christ was pre- 
sented to her mind, saying: “O, that is he who has 
come to me so often in my prayers. I could not find 
who he was!” And if God holds any terms of society 


1 Memoir, pp. 174-175. 


424 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 


and reciprocal feeling with our race, what should we 
more naturally expect, than that he will always be 
revealed, in this manner, to such as earnestly seek the 
right, and give play to their inborn, though distracted, 
affinities, longing and searching, if haply they may 
find him? But if God is revealed thus tenderly, even 
to minds in the darkness of heathenism, it is plain as it 
can be, that the great, internal changes of character we 
are discussing, are not to be accounted for by the pre- 
conceptions that are taken up and become operative in 
the subjects. 

After all, this question is more naturally and satis- 
factorily handled, in the more ordinary form; viz., as 
a question of Christian experience ; what it is, whether 
it supposes, necessarily, a supernatural power, and 
what is the real significance of the testimony given by 
so many witnesses for Christ? For the work of the 
Spirit, which is the Christian conception, is but another 
name, as already intimated, for that supernatural Provi- 
dence or government of the world in souls, which, we 
are endeavoring to show, is dispensed in the interest 
of Christianity. 

Thus we have vast crowds of witnesses, rising up in 
every age, who testify, out of their own consciousness, 
to the work of the Spirit, and the new-creating power 
of Jesus, who, by the Spirit, is revealed in their hearts. 
In nothing do they consent with a more hymn-like 
harmony than in the testimony that their inward trans- 
formation is a divine work —a new revelation of God, 
by the Spirit, in their human consciousness. They are 
such men too as the world are most wont to believe, 
on all other subjects. Neither has any one a particle 
of evidence to set against their testimony. All which 
the stiffest unbeliever can allege against them, is that 


IS GOVERNMENT IN SOULS 425 


he himself has no such consciousness, or has found no 
such discovery verified to his particular experience. 
They testify, on their part, with one voice, to a truth 
positive, and the whole opposing world can offer noth- 
ing, on its part, against their testimony, but the simple 
negative fact of having in themselves no such experience. 

Meantime, their very word itself conveys a look of 
verisimilitude, and makes a show of God, so necessary 
to us, and so honorable to him, that it challenges the 
spontaneous faith of every ingenuous and thoughtful 
soul. We never hear any single man of them speak of 
his better life as a development, or a something merely 
unfolded in him, by natural laws. No _ preacher 
preaches, no martyr goes to the fires in that vein. But 
they all talk of their faith, and of what God gives to 
their faith ; the conscious impotence of all their strug- 
gles with themselves, and the easy victory they find in 
God ; how they are borne up as on eagle’s wings, their 
wonderful light, their peace, the love they could not 
have to their enemies, but now, by Christ revealed 
within, are able to exercise, unstinted and free. Con- 
sciously they are not living in the plane of nature, they 
do and suffer things which nature can as little do as 
she can raise the dead. They conquer their fears, God 
helping their faith. Pride, passion, habit, they sub- 
due in the same manner. Religious prejudices, also, 
animosities of race, the contempt of learning, and the 
bigotry of schools melt away in them, leaving a char- 
acter that is visibly a new creation. Even the skeptic, 
who has come to such a state of intellectual disease 
that he can no longer find how to believe any thing, is 
filled and flooded with the light of God, in Christ and 
the Spirit, as soon as he can heartily ask it, with a will 
to be taught. And so we have a vast cloud of wit- 


426 THIS IS THE WITNESS 


nesses, testifying in all ages, to the reality of a super- 
natural grace, which is the root and power of all their 
works, and the hidden spring of their unspeakable joys. 
They know it to be so; for they consciously get their 
impulse wholly from without any terms of power in 
themselves, or of causality in nature. They could as 
easily believe that they make the rain in their own cis- 
terns, as that their holy experiences are not from God 
himself. So do they all testify with one voice — Paul, 
Clement, Origen, St. Bernard, Huss, Gerson, Luther, 
Fenelon, Baxter, Flavel, Doddridge, Wesley, Edwards, 
Brainard, Taylor, all the innumerable host of believers 
that have entered into rest, whether it be the persecuted 
saint of the first age, driven home in his chariot of blood, 
or the saint who died but yesterday in the arms of his 
family. They live in the common consciousness of a 
power supernatural, saying —‘“ Yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me.” Nothing, in short, would violate, or in 
real truth obliterate, so much of the Christian history, 
as to qualify it down to the mere terms of natural 
development. Indeed it would be the virtual expurga- 
tion from it of all the saints of God, whatever they 
have done, or been, or said. 

Holding the subject in this form, our critics of the 
naturalistic school commonly turn their account of the 
matter, in some such way as this. They say to Paul, 
Luther, Knox, Edwards, and, in fact, the whole church 
of God: “ We do you full credit, as being made just as 
much better men as you say you are, and as being exer- 
cised subjectively, in just the way you think you are. 
You are only mistaken, as we have now discovered, in 
respect to the manner and grounds of your experience. 
You have prayed and thought you were heard, you 
have believed and thought your success was a gift of 


OF THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS 427 


faith, you have been strengthened against fears and 
pains of death—all you that have been martyrs — 
others have been strengthened in their times of tempta- 
tion, and you all think it was God who bore you up by 
the immediate gift of himself; but we are able now to 
tell you that you were, so far, mistaken. There is a 
law of nature, by which all these things come to pass, 
and it is so fixed that nature will help you always, or 
even inspire you, just according to what you do. All - 
this which you think comes from God, by a regenera- 
tive dispensation, is the development of nature, by a 
generative.” 

There would seem to be a rather remarkable defect 
of modesty in this assumption, of which it can not be 
supposed that its authors are themselves aware. It not 
only shows the whole church of God that their concep- 
tions of Christian experience are mistaken, but it cor- 
rects them in precisely that which they testify, in the 
philosophic method itself. This, they say, we find by 
experiment. It is not our speculation, it is not any theo- 
retic interpretation put on our experience, but it is our 
experience itself. When they say that God consciously 
strengthens them in their day of trial, gives them what 
to say, hears their prayers, keeps them in peace by the 
testimony that they please him, fills them day and 
night with his fullness, and our modern critic runs to 
them to mend their phraseology, and shows them how 
to come at the same things ina more rational way, even 
by letting the divinity that is in them already have a 
free development, according to natural laws, it wonld 
not be strange if they should answer with a sigh, “ Ah, 
dear child, we can not get on thus; for all that bread 
on which we feed is manna that we gather, and nota 
loaf that is hid in our nature. Turn us down thus 


428 THIS IS THE WITNESS 


upon nature for a gospel, and our wings are cut. All 
that we know of God and divine things, we know by 
stretching upward and away from nature, and believing 
in God, as in Christ revealed. Every success we get, 
every joy we reach, comes of rejecting just that method, 
by which thou proposest to regulate our experience. 
May it not be that what thou hast discovered by reason, 
has kept thee from faith, and that still thou needest 
some one to teach thee, what be the first principles of 
the doctrine of Christ ?” 


What we find then as the result of our inquiry is, 
that the government of the world shows the same hand 
which appears in the character and work of Jesus. In 
the first place, we discover that nothing takes place in 
the world that ought to take place, and even must take 
place, if the government and supreme law of things 
were confined to mere nature and her processes. Next, 
we find that the issues of wars and discoveries, the 
migrations, diplomacies, and great historic eras of races 
and nations, the extinctions and revivals of learning, 
and the persecutions and corruptions, not less than the 
reformations of churches, are all so modulated by the 
superintending government of the world, as to perpetu- 
ate the gospel of Christ, and, as far as we can see, to 
insure its ultimate triumph. Then passing into the in- 
terior history of souls, which, after all, is the chief field 
of God’s government in the earth, we meet vast myriads 
of witnesses in all the walks of life, and in all the past 
ages, who profess to know God in the witness of their 
internal life and show, by tokens manifold and clear, 
that they are raised above themselves, in all that makes 
the character of their life. To sum up all in one brief 
expression, we have found a New Testament in the 


OF THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS 429 


government of the world. It penetrates all depths of 
matter, heaves in the roll of the sea, administers back 
of the thrones, tempers the courses of history, restrain- 
ing remainders and excesses of wrath, overturning, con- 
serving, restoring, healing, and reaffirming thus, in all 
the grand affairs of human life, without and within, 
just what Christ the Word declares, when ascending to 
reign — All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth. What, in fact, do we see with our eyes, but that 
the scheme of the four gospels is the scheme of univer- 
sal government itself? 


CHAPTER XIV 
MIRACLES AND SPIRITUAL GIFTS NOT DISCONTINUED 


Ir the world is managed supernaturally, or as being 
in the interest of Christianity, which is the doctrine 
maintained in the last chapter, a subordinate and vastly 
inferior, though, to many, much more pressing question, 
remains to be settled; viz., what has become of the 
miracles and supernatural gifts of the gospel era? 
These were associated historically with the planting of 
Christianity. By such tokens Christ authenticated his 
mission, giving the like signs to his apostles, to be the 
authentication of theirs. What, then, it is peremptorily 
required of us to answer, has become of these miracles, 
these tongues, gifts of healing, prophecies? what, also, 
of the dreams, presentiments, visits of angels? what of 
judgments falling visibly on the head of daring and 
sacrilegious crimes ? what of possessions, magic, sorcery, 
necromancy? If these once were facts, why should 
they not be now? If they are incredible now, when 
were they less so? Does a fact become rational and 
possible by being carried back into other centuries of 
time? Is it given us to see that Christianity throws 
itself out boldly on its facts, in these matters, or does it 
come in the shy and cautious manner some appear to 
suppose, asserting a few miracles and half-mythologic 
marvels that occurred in the romantic ages of history, 
where no investigation can reach them; adding, to 
escape all demand of such now, in terms of present 

430 


THE CANON IS CLOSED, 431 


evidence, that they are discontinued, because the canon 
is closed and there is no longer any use for them ? 

Such a disposal of the question, it must be seen, wears 
a suspicious look. If miracles are inherently incredible, 
which is the impression at the root of our modern unbe- 
lief, evidently nothing is gained by thrusting them back 
into remote ages of time. If, on the other hand, they 
are inherently credible, why treat them as if they were 
not ? raising ingenious and forced hypotheses to account 
for their non-occurrence? Christianity, it is true, is, 
in some sense, a complete organization, a work done 
that wants nothing added to finish it; but it does not 
follow that the canon of scripture is closed —that is a 
naked and violent assumption, supported by no word of 
scripture, and justified by no inference from the com- 
plete organization of the gospel. For still, even accord- 
ing to Christ’s own thought, it was a complete mustard 
seed only ; which, though it is complete as a seed, so 
that no additions can be made to it, has yet, neverthe- 
less, much to do in the way of growth, and no one can 
be sure that other books of scripture may not some time 
be necessary for that. We do not even know that a 
new dispensation, or many such, may not be required 
to unfold this seed, and make it the full-grown tree. 
It may not be so. I have no present suspicion that any 
such new contributions, or varieties of ministration, are 
needed. But it is better not to assume that of which 
we have and can have no possible evidence ; least of all 
are we called to do it, when the assumption itself is 
evidently made for a purpose, and wears a look of sus- 
picion that weakens the respect of really important 
truths. 

As little does it follow that, if the canon of scripture 
is closed up, there is no longer any use, or place, for 


432 BUT IT DOES NOT FOLLOW 


miracles and spiritual gifts. That is a conclusion 
taken by a mere act of judgment, when plainly no judg- 
ment of man is able to penetrate the secrets and grasp 
the economic reasons of God’s empire, with sufficient 
insight to affirm any thing on a subject so deep and diffi- 
cult. There may certainly be reasons for such miracles 
and gifts of the Spirit, apart from any authentication of 
new books of scripture. Indeed, they might possibly 
be wanted even the more, to break up the monotony 
likely to follow, when revelations have ceased, and the 
word of scripture is forever closed up; wanted also 
possibly to lift the church out of the abysses of a mere 
second-hand religion, keeping it alive and open to the 
realities of God’s immediate visitation. 

And yet, for these and such like reasons, it is very 
commonly assumed, and has been since the days of 
Chrysostom, that miracles and all similar externalities 
of divine power have been discontinued. It is not 
observed that the date itself is contradicted by the rea- 
sons; for no book of scripture had then been written 
for at least two hundred and fifty years; though the 
miracles had never come, as a matter of fact, to any 
supposed vanishing point, till that time. But that 
miracles continued for two hundred and fifty years 
after there was no reason for them, is no great obstruc- 
tion to a theory of the fact and the reasons, after it has 
once gained acceptance. Hence there is almost noth- 
ing, known to be derived from the scripture itself, 
which is affirmed more positively, or with a more set- 
tled air of authority, than this discontinuance of mira- 
cles and spiritual gifts. Possibly some may even take 
it as a heresy and a great scandal to the.cause of truth, © 
to suggest a possibility of mistake in the assumption. 
Nay, there are probably many Christian teachers who 


THAT THE GIFTS ARE DISCONTINUED 433 


would even think it a disorder in God’s realm itself, if 
now, in these modern times, these days of science, the 
well-graduated uniformity of things were to be dis- 
turbed by an irruption of miraculous demonstrations. 
It would upset many whole chapters of theory. 

At the same time, there are classes of teachers and 
disciples, now and then, who spring up, raising the 
question whether miracles are not restored, or some 
time to be restored? Even Archbishop Tillotson was 
of opinion that they probably enough might be, in the 
case of an attempt to publish the gospel among heathen 
nations.1_ But in all these cases, the point is ‘virtu- 
ally conceded that miracles have been discontinued ; 
whereas the truer and more rational question is, whether 
they have not always remained, as in the apostolic age ? 
Of course there have been cessations, here and there, just 
as there have been cessations of faith and decays of holy 
living ; just as there are cessations of spiritual influence, 
for the same reason; though no one supposes, on that 
account, that the work of the Holy Spirit has been dis- 
continued, and requires to be reinstituted, in order to 
be an existing fact. There is no likelihood that a 
miraculous dispensation would be restored, after being 
quite passed by and lost. But there may be casual sus- 
pensions and reappearances, sometimes in one place, and 
sometimes in another, that are quite consistent with the 
conviction that the dispensation is perpetual, never with- 
drawn, and never to be withdrawn. 

And this, on very deliberate and careful search, ap- 
pears to be the true opinion. We are able, too, it will 
be seen, to verify this opinion by abundant facts. Of 
course it is not implied, if we assert the continuance of 
these supernatural demonstrations in all ages, that they 


1 Works, Vol. X., p. 280. 


434 THESE MERE PRODIGIES 


will, in our time, be mere repetitions, or formal continu- 
ations, of those which distinguished the apostolic age ; 
it must be enough that such works appear, in forms 
adapted to our particular time and stage of advance- 
ment. Many persons demand that Christianity shall 
do precisely the same things which it did, or claims to 
have done, in the first times; not observing that the 
doing of a given thing is commonly a good reason why 
it should not be done again, and that the great law of 
adaptation, which is a first law of reason, will always 
require that there should be a change of administration, 
correspondent with our changes of state or condition. 
No one ever charges it as a defect of evidence for the 
supernatural gift of the decalogue, that God has not con- 
tinued, since that day, to give decalogues from every hill. 
On the contrary, when Christ appears, taking away, in 
some sense, the first covenant, that he may establish the 
second, we recognize a degree of evidence for both, in 
the fact itself that there is a show of progress in the 
transition. This progress of manner and kind we want 
in things supernatural, as well as in things natural ; 
else, if God were forever to repeat his old works, in 
their old forms, we should have a dull time of existence. 
What, then, if it should appear that our prophesyings, 
interpretations, healings, and other such gifts, have so far 
disguised their form, as to be sometimes recognized only 
with difficulty? Instead of discovering an objection to 
Christianity in the fact, what have we in it, possibly, but 
a confirmation of its rational evidence? And yet it is 
chiefly remarkable that the forms of the gifts are con- 
tinued with so little apparent variation. 

It is very obvious, or ought to be, beforehand, that 
these prodigies are not Christianity; the substance is 
vot in them; they are only signs and tokens of the 


ARE NOT CHRISTIANITY 435 


substance. Their propagation, therefore, is no prin- 
cipal interest of Christianity, and the living power of 
Christianity is never to be tested by their frequency, 
or the impressiveness of their operations. There may 
evidently be too many of them, as well as too few. 
As soon as they begin to be taken for things prin- 
cipal, or for the real substance, they become idols and 
hindrances to faith. When the world that ought to be 
repenting is taken up with staring, the sobriety of faith 
is lost in the gossip of credulity. And then, instead of 
a solid, ever-during reign of Providence, that is goy- 
erning the world in the interest of Christianity, we 
should have a glittering fire-work round us, that really 
governs nothing, has no power to regenerate souls, or 
strengthen the kingdom of Christ in the earth. Indeed, 
we actually see this folly beginning, in a very short 
time, to get possession of men’s minds, and find the 
apostles, on that account, contending most deliberately 
against it.1 It was a great evil that so many were more 
ready to figure in the gifts, or go after and admire the 
gifts, than to live by faith, and walk with Christ. and 
bear fruits meet for repentance. 

It is our impression, to speak frankly, that the party 
of discontinuance, and the party of restoration, and the 
party also of denial, who make so much of the fact that 
these prodigies are gone by, and are even conceded to 
be now incredible, do all concur in a partial misconcep- 
tion of their place in God’s economy, and of their rela- 
tive importance to it. To distinguish truly their office, 
we need to consider the two opposite extremes of char- 
acter to which they are related. We are never to look 
at God’s means, as being perfect or not. in themselves; 
they are good only as medicine for a fevered and dis- 


11 Cor. xii.-xv. 


436 USES AND LAWS 


ordered nature in man, requiring also to be increased, 
or withdrawn, according to the oscillations of that im- 
perfect and disjointed nature, as it swings to this or 
that opposite of excess. 

To see how these gifts operate, or what place they 
fill, let us suppose it to be an accepted fact that God is 
reigning in a grand supernatural scheme of order, and 
governing the world, externally and in souls, for Chris- 

- tianity’s sake; let it be understood and asserted that, 
even in things supernatural, God rules by eternal and 
fixed laws; and it will not be long before the sottish 
habit of remaining sin will begin to’ settle even Chris- 
tian souls into a stupor of intellectual fatality. Does 

___ not every thing continue as it was from the beginning? 

Prayer becomes a kind of dumb-bell exercise, good as 

exercise, but never to be answered. The word is good 
to be exegetically handled, but there is no light of inter- 
pretation in souls, more immediate; all truth is to be 
second-hand truth, never a vital beam of God’s own 
light. To subside into sacraments, that are only 
priestly manipulations, is now easy. The drill of 
repetitions it is more readily hoped will wear into the 
rock, than that grace will dissolve it. A church-wor- 
ship is easily taken for piety. Or, if there be no ex- 
ternal change of the modes of religion, it is itself 
lowered and disempowered, as much as if a lower and 
more earthly form were chosen. All the possibilities 
are narrowed and shrunk away. Expectation is gone 
— God is too far off, too much imprisoned by laws, to 
allow expectation from him. The Christian world has 
been gravitating, visibly, more and more, toward this 
vanishing point of faith, for whole centuries, and espe- 
cially since the modern era of science began to shape 
the thoughts of men by only scientific methods.  Reli- 


yy! 
OF SUCH GIFTS 437 


gion has fallen into the domain of the mere under- 
standing, and so it has become a kind of wisdom not 
to believe much, therefore to expect as little. . 

Now it is this descent to mere rationality that makes 
an occasion for the signs and wonders of the Spirit. 
The unbelieving and false spirit, in  half-sanctified 
minds, converts order into immobility, laws into leth- 
argy, and the piety that ought to be strong _ because 
God is great, grows torpid and weak under his great- 
ness. Let him now break forth in miracle and holy 
gifts, let it be seen that he is still the living God, in 
the midst of his dead people, and they will be quick- 
ened to a resurrection by the sight. Now they see 
that God can do something still, and has his liberty. 
He can hear prayers, he can help them triumph in dark 
hours, their bosom sins he can help them master, all his 
promises in the scripture he can fulfill, and they go to 
him with great expectations. They see, in these gifts, 
that the scripture stands, that the graces, and works, 
and holy fruits of the apostolic age, are also for them. 
It is as if they had now a proof experimental of the 
resources embodied in the Christian plan. The Living 
God, immediately revealed, and not historically only, 
begets a feeling of present life and power, and religion 
is no more a tradition, a second-hand light, but a grace 
of God unto salvation, operative now. 

But it will shortly begin to be discovered, now, that 
the sin-spirit is weak on the opposite side, and runs to 
the opposite excess. Before, it went back to the under- 
standing, to nature, and to general unbelief. Now it 
rushes on to fanaticism, and has even a pride in believ- 
ing things really incredible. It does not follow, because 
one heals the sick, or speaks with tongues, that he is 
therefore clear of his moral infirmities, as a fallen man. 


438 USES AND LAWS 


He is taken with the stare of multitudes, gives way to 
a subtle ambition, magnifies overmuch his particular 
gift, runs into shows of conceit, grows impatient of 
contradiction, and loosens the rage of passion — by 
that, driving himself into even wild excesses both of 
opinion and practice —and finally coming to a full 
end, as one burnt up in the fierceness of his own heat. 
As before, without the miracles and the gifts, religion 
went down to extinction, under the wear of mere rou- 
tine, so now the miracles and the gifts have issued in 
a wild Corinthianism, which whole chapters of apostolic 
lecture can hardly reduce to sobriety. And the result 
is, that now all the supernatural demonstrations are 
brought into disrespect, and a process begins of oscilla- 
tion backward, to the ordinary and regular; then toward 
rationalism again, unbelief, and spiritual impotence. 

Now, between these two kinds of excess, the church 
is always swinging, and by a kind of moral necessity 
must be. It is not that God’s administration is irregu- 
lar and desultory, but that such is the unsteadiness and 
unreliableness of our poor disjointed humanity. The 
oscillation back toward order and reason is commonly 
longer and more gradual; that toward miracles and 
gifts, shorter and sharper, because there is more heat 
and celerity in it, and less time is requisite to bring it 
to its limit. 

It need hardly be observed that every outbreak of 
supposed miracle and supernatural demonstration has 
run its career in just this manner. It has begun with 
a most fervent seeking unto God, and a remarkable 
singleness of devotion to Christ. The mighty works 
appeared as revelations of divine power, scarcely ex- 
pected by the subjects themselves, and there was no 
excess except as the ideas and maxims of a non-expec- 


OF THE GIFTS 439 


tant piety in the church were scandalized by such dis- 
plays of God. But there was no sufficient balance in 
the moral infirmities of a state of sin, to keep down the 
passions, and hold in check the wildness of conceit, and 
the consequence was that the subjects, unable to dis- 
tinguish what was from God, and what from themselves, 
took their thoughts for oracles, and their fancies for 
visions, and very shortly ran the true work of God in 


them, into the ground. So it has been hitherto, and © 


so it probably will be, till some age or state is reached, 
where men are sufficiently modulated and sobered by 
truth to have the heavenly gifts in terms of heavenly 
order, and be fired with all highest mountings of love, 
without setting on fire also the course of nature in 
their corrupted hearts and bodies. Then the oscilla- 
tions, of which we have spoken, will cease, the ordi- 
nary and regular life will be raised up to meet the 
extraordinary, and become a state of immediate divine 


knowledge and experience. Then the extraordinary, 


- the miracles and gifts, will lose out their explosive vio- 
lence, and become the steady, calculable quantities of a 
really godly life. That is the true kingdom of God, 
fulfilled in its idea—his tabernacle pitched with men. 
Life is now an open state of first-hand experience, full 
of God, where the young men see visions, and the old 
men dream dreams, without becoming either visionary 
or dreamy in their excesses, where feeling and reason 
coalesce, and the dear humility of love chastens all the 
flaming victories of faith and prayer. 

It has been a very common thing with Christian 
teachers, and even with the writers of deliberate his- 
tory, to discredit all appearances of supernatural won- 
ders, such as miracles and spiritual gifts, because they 
make so bad a figure in the end. Whereas the true 


Cue 


440 WHY THE LYING WONDERS 


and only true test of them is their beginning. We 
may as well test the opposite oscillation in this manner, — 
and because it ends in the state of unbelief and all 
impotence —a religion without life and sanctifying 
power — have it as our conclusion that the convictions 
of order and holy regularity, which it set up at the 
beginning, are a dismal and cold illusion, dishonored 
by its fruits. It is, doubtless, true that, as men judge, 
the excesses of fanaticism are less respectable than the 
excesses of deadness and immobility. It is so, because 
the common vote of the world is on that side, making 
it always a most creditable thing to live in such dead- 
ness to God and all holy things, as answers no one of 
the intelligent uses of life. But whoever ponders 
thoughtfully the question, will find ample room to 
doubt which is really widest of a just respect, the 
excesses of fanaticism and false fire, or the comatose 
and dull impotence of a religion that worships God 
without expectation. 

It may occur to some to raise the question, why it 
is that the lying wonders of necromancy, and magic, 
and demoniacal possessions, are wont to be grouped 
contemporaneously with the true wonders of prophecy 
and divine gifts. The answer is readily supplied by 
the general solution of the subject here offered. The 
two kinds, probably, are not strictly contemporaneous, 
and it is very likely that the bad wonders will precede 
the others; even as they seem to do just at this par- 
ticular crisis. For, after all the facts and functions of 
religion are reduced to a second-hand character —a re- 
ported history, a contrived and reasoned dogma, a drill 
of observances, where no fire burns, and no glimpses 
into eternity are opened by visions and revelations of 
the Lord, or where no God appears to be found, who 


ARE ATTENDANT 441 


is nigh enough to support expectation in his wor- 
shipers— then, at length, even the outer people of 
unbelief begin to ache in the sense of vacuity, and 
there, not unlikely, the pain is first felt. Their reli- 
gious and supernatural instincts have been so long 
defrauded that it would be a kind of satisfaction to 
get the silence broken, if only by some vision of a ghost 
—any thing to show or set open the world unknown. 
They would even go hunting, with Clement, for some 
one to raise them a spirit. Hence the strange zeal 
observable in the new sorcery of our day. Why, it 
shows the other world as a living fact ! proves immor- 
tality ! does more than any gospel ever did to certify 
us of these things! But the secret of this greedy, 
undistinguishing haste of delusion is the sharpness of 
the previous appetite ; and that was caused by the 
abstinence of long privation. We had so far come 
into the kingdom of nullities — calling it the kingdom 
of God —we had become so rational, and gotten even 
God’s own liberty into such close terms of natural 
order, that the immediate, living realities of religion, 
or religious experience, were under a doom of suppres- 
sion. It was as if there were no atmosphere to breathe, 
and the minds most remote from the impressions and 
associations of piety, naturally enough felt the hunger 
first. Which hunger, alas! they are thinking to feed, 
by a superstitious trust, in the badly written, silly 
oracles of our new-discovered, scientific necromancy. 
But the church, also, or Christian discipleship, begins 
of course to ache with the same kind of pain, feeling 
after some way out of the dullness of a second-hand 
faith, and the dryness of a merely reasoned gospel, and 
many of the most longing, most expectant souls, are 
seen waiting for some livelier, more apostolic demon- 


442 SPORADIC CASES, DOUBTLESS, 


strations. They are tired, beyond bearing, of the mere 
school forms and defined notions ; they want some kind 
of faith that shows God in living commerce with men, 
such as he vouchsafed them in the former times. And 
if we can trust their report, they are not wholly disap- 
pointed. Probably enough, therefore, there may just 
now be coming forth a more distinct and widely-attested 
dispensation of gifts and miracles, than has been wit- 
nessed for centuries. If so, it will raise great expecta- 
tions of the speedy and last triumph of holiness in the 
earth. But these expectations may be delayed. By 
and by the subjects of the gifts, or those who think to 
go beyond them, may begin to approach the bad ex- 
treme on this side. Ambition may stimulate pretense 
and the false heat of passion. Then come wild ex- 
cesses ; then a general collapse, in which the wonders 
cease. And perhaps only this may be gained; that 
the sense of something more immediate than a religion 
of second causes has been burned into Christian souls, 
which it will take a century or two to exhaust. How- 
ever, as the sense of laws becomes more pervasively 
fixed in human thought, it is allowed us to believe that, 
as the gifts are themselves dispensed by fixed laws, the 
church will gradually come to be in them in that man- 
ner and hold them in the even way of intelligence. 
Holding this general view of miracles and supernat- 
ural gifts, it should not surprise us to find sporadic 
cases reported here and there, in this or that age of the 
world ; as little, to fall on periods in the church history, 
where large bodies of disciples, driven out into exile, or 
persecuted and hunted in their own country, are 
brought so close to God and opened so completely to 
his Spirit, as to become prophets and doers of mighty 
works. It may not be true in any age of the world, 


IN ALL THE PAST AGES 443 


and probably is not, that such gifts are absolutely dis- 
continued; so that no supernatural wonder of any kind 
takes place. Such wonders will vary their form; but 
in some form, scriptural or providential, ancient or new, 
social or only personal, they could be distinguished 
probably by any one having a sufficient knowledge of 
facts. 

What is wanted, therefore, on this subject, in order 
to any sufficient impression, is a full, consecutive inven- 
tory of the supernatural events, or phenomena of the 
world. There is reason to suspect that many would, in 
that case, be greatly surprised by the commonness of the 
instances. Could they be collected and chronicled, in 
their real multitude, what is now felt to be their 
strangeness would quite vanish away, and possibly they 
would even seem to recur, much as in the more ancient 
times of the world. But no such revision of history is 
possible. The material is accessible only in the most 
partial manner, and, if it were all at hand, could not be 
managed, or even be summed up, in such a recapitula- 
tion as our present limits will permit. 

The first thing arrived at, by any one who prosecutes 
this kind of inquiry, apart from all prepossessions and 
saws of tradition, will certainly be that the clumsy as 
sumption commonly held, of a cessation of the original, 
apostolic gifts, at about some given date, is forever ex- 
ploded; for, as in fact they never consented to be stayed 
or concluded by any given time, so in history they persist 
in running by all time, till finally the investigator, unable 
to set down any date after which they were not, comes 
into the discovery that the stream is a river, flowing 
continuously through all ages, and always to flow. He 
could not give us the wonders of Ignatius, Polycarp, 
Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Ireneus, Tertullian, Ori- 


444 SUCH GIFTS APPEAR 


gen, and there declare the point of cessation to be 
reached. He would not come down to Cyprian, or 
Augustine, and settle it there, or down to Paul the 
Hermit, and settle it there. The dreams of Huss, the 
prophesyings of Luther, and Fox, and Archbishop 
Usher, the ecstasies of Xavier, with innumerable other 
wonders, and visitations of God, in the saints of the 
church, during all the intervening ages, bridge the gulf 
between us and the ancient times, and bring us to a 
question of miracles and gifts, as a question of our own 
day and time. Such demonstrations became more 
nearly frivolous, when every thing was frivolous, and 
more visibly infected with superstition, when the church 
itself fell under the shadow of this baleful power; but, 
though the evidences of supernatural facts were corre. 
spondently diminished, fhere was never any sufficient 
reason for the conclusion that they were quite gone by 
and finally discontinued. 

It has been a subject of wonder that Mr. Newman, 
with all his remarkable powers as a writer, and a man 
of genius, should venture on the deliberate attempt to 
vindicate the authenticity of the church miracles. And 
probably enough, it is a fair subject of wonder, consid- 
ering that his purpose required him to vindicate as well 
those which are trivial and ridiculous as those which 
wear the dignity of truth and reason. His argument 
must, of course, break down, under such a load of ab- 
surdities; but it does not follow that a more discrimina- 
tive argument, unencumbered by church restrictions, 
would not fare differently. 

Descending now to the times we call modern, the 
times, for example, subsequent to the Reformation, 
nothing is easier, exactly contrary to the very common 
impression, than to show that the same kind of prodi 


IN ALL AGES 445 


gies are current here, in the last three, as in the first 
three centuries of the church. Whoever has read that 
Christian classic ** The Scots Worthies,” has followed a 
stream of prophecies, and healings, and visible judg- 
ments, and specific answers to prayer, and discernments 
of spirits, corresponding, at all points, with the gifts 
and wonders of the apostolic age. And the men that 
figure in these gifts and powers are the great names of 
the heroic age of religion in their country — Wishart, 
Knox, Erskine, Craig, Davidson, Simpson, Welch, 
Guthrie, Blair, Welwood, Cameron, Cargill, and Peden. 
And it is a curious fact, in regard to this great subject, 
that, while we believe so little, and deny so much, and 
hold so many opposite assumptions, this same book of 
Howie, that chronicles in beautiful simplicity more 
gifts and wonders than all of Irving’s, is published by 
one of the largest and most conservative bodies of 
Christians in our country, and is read by thousands, 
young and old, with eager delight. Is it that we like 
miracles and supernatural wonders, so far off that we 
need not, or that we can, believe them ? 

At a later period, on the repeal of the edict of Nantz 
and in the persecutions that followed, a large body of 
the Protestant or Reformed disciples, called Huguenots, 
hunted by their pursuers, fled to the mountains of 
Cevennes. Some of them also escaped to England and 
other Protestant countries. Among these unhappy peo- 
ple the miraculous gifts were developed, and by them 
were more or less widely disseminated abroad. They 
had tongues and interpretations of tongues. They had 
healings and the discerning of spirits. They prophe- 
sied in the Spirit. Intelligent persons went out from 
Paris, to hear, observe, and make inquiry, and these 
people were much discussed as “Les Trembleurs des 


446 THEY APPEAR SUBSEQUENTLY 


Cevennes.” In England they were also discussed, as 
the “French Prophets,” and the fire they kindled in 
England caught among some of the English disciples, 
and burned for many years.) 

About forty years after this appearing of the gifts 
among the Huguenots, a very similar development ap- 
peared among the Catholic or Jansenist population of 
Paris. Cures began to be wrought at the tomb of Saint 
Médard, and particularly of persons afflicted with con- 
vulsions. And, as the Jansenists were, at this time, 
under persecution at the hands of the Jesuits, and bear- 
ing witness, as they believed, for the truth of Christ, it 
is not wonderful that they began to be exercised, much 
as the Huguenots of the Cevennes had been. They 
had the gift of tongues, the discerning of spirits, and 
the gift of prophesying. These were called “ Conyul- 
sionnaires de Saint Médard,” because of the eestatic 
state into which they seemed to be raised.? 

The sect of Friends, from George Fox downward, 
have had it as a principle to expect gifts, revelations, 
discernings of spirits, and indeed a complete divine 
movement. Thus Fox, over and above his many reve- 
lations, wrought, as multitudes believed, works of heal- 
ing in the sick. Take the following references from 
the Index of his “ Journal,” as affording, in the briefest 
form, a conception of the wonders he was supposed, and 
supposed himself to have wrought; “ Miracles wrought 
by the power of God — The lame made whole — The 
diseased restored —A distracted woman healed — A 
great man given over by physicians restored — Speaks 
to asick man in Maryland, who was raised up by the 
Lord’s power — Prays the Lord to rebuke J. C.’s infirm- 
ity, and the Lord by his power soon gave him ease.” 


1Morning Watch, Vol. IV., p. 383. 2Ib., Vol. IV., p. 386. 


TO THE REFORMATION 447 


Led on thus by Fox, the Friends have always claimed 
the continuance of the original gifts of the Spirit in the 
apostolic age, and have looked for them, we may almost 
say, in the ordinary course of their Christian demonstra- 
tions. We are not surprised, therefore, to find such a 
man of policy and incomparable shrewdness as Isaac T. 
Hopper, believing as firmly in the prophetic gifts of his 
friend, Arther Howell, as in those of Isaiah, or Paul. 
This Howell was a preacher and leather currier in Phila- 
delphia, a man of perfect integrity in all the business of 
his life, and also a most gentle and benignant soul in 
all his intercourse and society with men. One Sunday 
morning, on his way to Germantown, he met a funeral 
procession, when, knowing nothing of the deceased, “ it 
was suddenly revealed to him,” so says the history, ‘“ that 
the occupant of the coffin before him was a woman, whose 
life had been saddened by the suspicion of a crime which 
she never committed. The impression became strong 
on his mind, that she wished him to make certain state- 
ments at her funeral. When the customary services 
were finished, Arther Howell rose and asked permission 
tospeak. ‘I did not know the deceased even by name,’ 
said he, ‘but it is given me to say that she suffered 
much, and unjustly. Her neighbors generally suspected 
her of a crime that she did not commit; and, in a few 
weeks from this time, it will be clearly made manifest 
that she was innocent. A few hours before her death, 
she talked on this subject with the clergyman who at- 
tended upon her, and who is now present; and it is 
now given me to aoe the communication she made 
to him on that occasion.’ 

“He then proceeded to relate the particulars of the 
interview ; to which the clergyman listened with evi- 
dent astonishment. When the communication was fin- 


448 THESE GIFTS APPEAR 


ished, he said, ‘I do not know who this man is, or how 
he has obtained information on this subject ; but cer- 
tain it is, that he has repeated, word for word, a con- 
versation which I supposed was known only to myself 
and the deceased.’”! The explanation came, it is 
added, in exact accordance with Howell’s promise. 

We are brought down, thus, to our own age and time 
— is it credible that the apostolic gifts and all the orig- 
inal wonders of the church are extant, or in real bestow- 
ment, even now? My argument does not imperatively 
require it of me to go this length, and say that they are. 
It is only a little better sustained on the supposition 
that they are. I am well aware, at the same time, that 
a sober recapitulation of what appear to be the facts of the 
question will appear to many to be even a kind of weak- 
ness. Enough that, consciously to myself, it requires a 
much stronger balance of equilibrium, and a much firmer 
intellectual justice, saying nothing of the necessary cour- 
age, to report these facts, without any protestations of 
dissent or discredit, than it would to toss them by, with 
derision, in compliance with the mere conventional 
notions, and current judgments of the times. I shall 
therefore dare to report as true, facts which, neither I, 
nor any body else, has even so much as a tolerable show 
of reason for denying or treating with lightness. © 

How many cases of definite answers to prayers, such 
as are reported in the cases of Stilling, Franke, and 
others, are brought to our knowledge, every week in 
the year. Cases of definite premonition are reported 
so familiarly and circumstantially, as to make a con- 
siderable item in the newspaper literature of our time. 
Prophecies of good men, or sometimes of poets and 
other literary men, are so often and particularly ful- 


1 Life of Isaac T. Hopper, pp. 258-260. 


IN OUR OWN TIME 449 


filled, as to be the common wonder of the merely 
curious, who profess no faith in their verity, as com- 
munications from God. Dreams are reported, how 
often, foreshadowing facts, in a manner so peculiar as 
to forbid any supposition of accident, under conditions 
ofchance. The state of trance is exemplified in Flavel 
and Tennent, and indeed hundreds of others, as remark- 
ably as in Paul, in his vision of the third heaven. Cases 
are reported in every community, where the defiant 
wrath of blasphemy has been suddenly struck down, as 
by some bolt of invisible judgment ; others, where a 
slowly coming retribution has so exactly retaliated the 
shape of a sin, as to raise the impression that nothing 
but some directing will of God can account for the cor- 
respondence. A great sensation was made in the 
Christian world, only a few years ago, by the recurrence 
of tongues, healings, prophecies, and other gifts, both 
in London, as connected with the preaching of Mr. 
Irving, and at Port Glasgow in Scotland, in the more 
humble but not less respectable demonstrations of the 
two MacDonalds. The question has been very sum- 
marily disposed of, and the conclusion has been gen- 
erally taken, that these reported cases of spiritual gifts 
were unworthy of credit — mere hallucinations of the 
parties concerned. On a deliberate revision of the 
question, I am induced. to admit, and, since I have it, 
to express, a very different impression. These Mac- 
Donalds, for example, are men of unimpeachable char- 
acter, one of them, (as will be seen, from the cogent 
articles he wrote, remonstrating against the new 
churchism taken up at length by Mr. Irving,) a man 
of great calmness, and remarkably well poised in the 
balance of his understanding. And yet this man is not 
only gifted with a power of healing the sick, but he 


450 THESE GIFTS APPEAR 


is overtaken unexpectedly with the strange gift of 
tongues ; viz., an ecstatic utterance, in words and 
sounds, which neither he, nor any that hear him, under- 
stand. Now there is nothing in this apparent gibber- 
ish that could any how become a temptation to the 
enthusiast or the pretender. It seems, at first view, to 
be an exercise so wide of intelligence, as to create no 
impression of respect. And for just that reason it has 
the stronger evidence when it occurs; for, notwith- 
standing all that is said by the commentators about 
tongues imparted for the preaching of the gospel, I 
have found no one of all the reported cases of tongues, 
in which the tongue was intelligible, either to the 
speaker or the hearers, except as it was made so by a 
supernatural interpretation— which accords exactly, 
also, with what is said of tongues in the New Testa- 
ment. And yet, on second thought, they have all the 
greater dignity and propriety, for just the reason that 
they require another gift to make them intelligible. For 
this gift of tongues, representing the Divine Spirit as 
playing the vocal organs of a man, which are the de- 
livering powers of intelligence in his organization, is 
designed to be a symbol to the world of the possibility 
and fact of a divine access to the soul, and a divine 
operation in it—a symbol more expressive, in fact, 
than any other could be. And then it is the more 
exactly appropriate in its adaptation, that it wants an- 
other gift in the hearer, exactly correspondent, to under- 
stand it or give the interpretation. For so it is with 
all revelations of the Spirit, they are not only uttered 
or penned by inspiration, but they want a light of the 
Spirit in the receiver, to really apprehend their power. 
Not even the prophets understood their visions. Be- 
sides, there is I know not what sublimity in this gift 


IN OUR OWN TIME 451 


of tongues, as related to the great mystery of language ; 
suggesting, possibly, that all our tongues are from the 
‘Eternal Word, in souls ; there being, in his intelligent 
nature as Word, millions doubtless of possible tongues, 
that are as real to him as the spoken tongues of the 
world. 

Tongues were also spoken every week in London, 
and there was much discussion there of the case, in par- 
ticular, of Miss Fancourt as a case of healing. She 
was a cripple, reduced to a bed-ridden state, by a curve 
of the spine, and the painful disorder of almost all the 
joints of her body. She had been lying for two years 
on a couch, padded and curved, to suit her distorted 
form. Her family belonged to the established church, 
and she was herself a deeply Christian person. A 
Christian friend, who had been greatly interested in her 
behalf, called one evening, when the subject of miracu- 
lous healing was discussed. The friend, Mr. Graves, 
was a believer in such gifts, but Mr. Fancourt, the 
father, a genuinely Christian person, was not. Aftera 
time, he disappeared, and during his absence from the 
room, Mr. G. arose, as Miss F. supposed, to take his 
leave. But instead of the “ good night” she expected, 
he commanded her to stand on her feet and walk. 
Forthwith she rose up, stood, walked, was clear of her 
pains, took on all the characters of a well person, and so 
continued. A great discussion was raised immediately 
in the public journals, and particularly between the 
Morning Watch and the Christian Observer ; in which 
the Observer took precisely the ground of Mr. Hume, 
as respects the credibility of miracles performed now ; 
insisting that, henceforth, since the scripture time, “ we 
must admit any solution rather than a miracle.” Lit- 
tle wonder is it that we have difficulty in sustaining the 


452 OPINIONS OF THINKING MEN 


historic facts of Christianity, when the most Christian, 
most evangelic teachers, assume, so readily, the utter 
incredibility of any such gifts and wonders as the gos- 
pels report, and as they themselves have it for a right- 
eousness to believe. 

But the doubt will be thrust upon us here, at the out- 
set, as we come down to our own times — and it might as 
well be discussed here, before we proceed to other cases 
in hand — whether such things are really credible now, 
or entitled to even so much as the respectful considera- 
tion of thinking men. And I make no question that 
the class called thinking men, in our age, will be ready, 
with few exceptions, to reject, in the gross, and without 
hesitation, all such pretended facts. They are ‘the 
illusions, it will be said, of ignorant minds, weakened 
by superstition, heated by religious enthusiasm ; stories 
that are published, it may be, with honest intentions, 
but which any philosopher will dismiss without a 
moment’s consideration. 

But whoever is ready, in this manner, I reply, to erect 
the thinking men of an age, into a tribunal of authori- 
tative judgment on such questions, has studied history to 

~\ little purpose. There certainly is sucha thingas religious 
delusion, or a faith of ignorance, in the world, and the 
humbler class of people are somewhat more exposed to 
__ this kind of infirmity. But their demonstrations have 
never been as eccentric, or their mistakes as contagious, 
or as difficult to rectify, as those of the thinking class. In 
matters of thought and opinion, there is no end either to 
the new crudities generated, or the newer criticisms by 
which they are extirpated. New types of thought sway 
the successive ages. One school, or system, expels an- 
other. Nothing rests, nothing gets a final form, in which 
it either can or ought to stand. The thinking and 


HAVE LITTLE AUTHORITY HERE 453 


educated class of minds, too, are less capable of many 
truths, because they are so generally preoccupied, wit- 
tingly or unwittingly, by a contrary fashion, and have 
such an implicit faith in what the learned world pretends 
just then to have settled. On which account, our Sav- 
iour himself was obliged to seek his adherents, and 
raise up his apostles, among the ingenuous and humble 
poor, saying —I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven 
and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise 
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. The 
wise and prudent knew so much, as even to be incapable 
of faith in him; and if there had been no other class 
but these learned gentlemen, these thinking men of their 
time, he would scarcely have left a follower. But the 
fishermen, the babes of poverty, were less preoccupied, 
and capable of better things. And for just this reason, 
abating their greater exposure to fantastic and extrava- 
gant delusions, it will be found, as a matter of fact, that 
the gospel of Christ has been more genuinely and 
evenly held, among this class, than it has among the 
professors and learned disciples. They testify one faith, 
and live one common life of grace, in all ages. 

In view of considerations like these, how much does it 
signify, that the thinking men of our time are so ready 
to pronounce on the incredibility, or even inadmissibility, 
of the supernatural facts just referred to? Nothing, it 
may be, but simply this; that the human mind, as edu- 
cated mind, is just now at the point of religious apogee ; 
where it is occupied, or preoccupied by nature, and can not 
think it rational to suppose that God does any thing 
longer, which exceedsthe causalities of nature. Isthere, 
in this, any proper ground of assurance, that, within fifty 
years from this time, it will not be set in a position to re- 
gard the faith of supernatural facts, as being even neces- 


454 OPINIONS OF THINKING MEN 


sary to the rationality, and the complete system of the 
universe? If, as I have shown, by the argument here con- 
structed, we act supernaturally ourselves, and if the fact of 
sin supposes a higher ground of unity in God’s plan than 
is comprehended in mere nature, what less ought we to ex- 
pect, than that, when the thinking mind of the world has 
finally worn a way through nature, ceasing to be hampered 
and shut in by it as now, it will strike into a broader field 
and be as ready to believe these supernatural facts, 
as it is at present to reject them? Indeed, there is 
a kind of law in skepticism itself, that must finally bring 
it back from its denial of a supernatural revelation, to a 
hearty and hungry embrace of it; for, no longer staggered 
by the supposition, as thousands now are, that the scrip- 
tures represent a dispensation gone by, which is hence- 
forth incredible, it will finally discover that they may 
be rationally believed, for just the reason that God is 
doing similar wonders now. And as certainly as no hu- 
man soul can rest in mere negation, or, what is no bet- 
ter, in nature as the only medium and symbol of religion, 
this discovery will be made. There are, in fact, two 
roads into this faith, the direct road, and the indirect or 
roundabout road of doubt and denial. One is taken by 
the humble, godly souls, whose only want it is to find 
their Lord, and walk with him; these go straight in, to 
his seat, know him in his private testimony, and the glo- 
rious induement of his power. Theothers, wanting only 
to find him scientifically, begin at nature, jealous of all 
but nature. They go round and round their idol, look- 
ing to find a Creator, and Christianity, and a present 
living God, in it, and, after they have torn their feet 
long enough, in beating through the briars of scientific 
reason, they will finally come in, as laggards, weary and 
sore, and join themselves to the little ones of faith, say- 


HAVE LITTLE AUTHORITY HERE 455 


ing truly, “This, after all, is reason; to believe the 
scriptures, just because the God of the scriptures is the 
God of to-day; as conversable now as ever, working as 
mightily, redeeming as gloriously; to believe in the su- 
pernatural, too, because we believe in nature; which, 
without and apart from this necessary complement, were 
only a worthless abortion, a fraction whose integer is 
lost.” 

It is also a matter worthy of particular note, when 
we are falling into the impression, that a verdict of the 
thinking men of our time is entitled to authority on 
such a question as this, that we have so many charac- 
ters in history which they can no way interpret, and 
which are in fact impossible to exist, under their theory. 
How awkwardly do they handle such characters, and 
how poorly do they get on in their attempts to solve, or 
even to conceive them. Joan of Arc, for instance — 
who has not observed the strange figure of imbecility 
made by the modern school of literary unbelief, in the 
attempt to find a place for any such character? They 
ean do nothing with her. In their view, she is impos- 
sible. And yet she has a place in history, and enters 
into the public life of the French nation, as a deter- 
mining cause of great events, in the same manner as 
Charlemagne, or any celebrated commander. She is a 
phenomenon, for which naturalism has no account, and 
which, under that kind of philosophy, had no right to 
happen. It can say that she was a prodigy of straw 
got up by the leaders, who sought in that manner to 
retrieve the desperate state of their cause; or that 
she was insane ; or that she was romantic ; or that she 
was a nervous and flighty girl, doing she scarce knew 
what ; or, finally, that she is a myth, and no real per- 
sonage. And yet the history laughs at all such wisdom, 


456 THEY MAKE NO GOOD ACCOUNT 


showing us a character real and true, that refuses to be 
explained by any such feeble inventions in the plane of 
nature, and can be nowise comprehended in that man- 
ner. She begins to be intelligible only when she is 
classed with Deborah, as a chieftain called out from the 
retirement of her sex, by the election of God, and pre- 
pared, supernaturally, in the place of secret vision. 

The same thing, in general, may be said of the inter- 
preters of Cromwell. Nothing can be made of him asa 
mere natural man. Humeand Clarendon call him a re- 
ligious hypocrite ; as if a hypocrite could be a hero! 
Lamartine, simply because he believes in a light which 
is not church light, calls him a fanatic. Carlyle is wiser, 
and, as far as possible, contrives to let him report him- 
self ; but as soon as he chances to loosen his own self- 
retention, for a moment, and let us see the man through 
his pantheistic glasses, a strange letting down will be 
observed, however slight or casual the glimpse taken — 
it is Cromwell by moonlight, and not the real hero. 
He ceases to be inspired, and begins to phosphoresce. 
He is no more a battle-axe, swung by the Lord Almighty, 
but one that lays on automatically, with force enough 
to make us think that he is. He is great in his faith, 
only it turns out that his faith, meeting no real object, 
is, though he thinks it not, a merely subjective im- 
pulse. Known to be a stout predestinarian, he is fitly 
shown to be a thunder shock in battle, as by the momen- 
tum of God’s eternal will in his person; only it is 
recollected that predestination, by God, is more philo- 
sophically phrased by the single word destiny; a force 
without will, or counsel, or end. He is great in power, 
therefore, invincible, irresistible, as being set on by the 
universal Nobody. Is this Cromwell? No genuine 
Cromwell is found, till he is shown by the side of 


OF KNOWN HISTORIC CHARACTERS 457 


Moses, a man who takes power as a burden set upon 
him by God, and wields it only the more sternly and 
faithfully, as power ; a man “not eloquent,” but ‘slow 
of speech,” coming down out of the mount, where God 
has taught him, to be the leader, liberator, and lawgiver 
of his people. This is the view of Cromwell toward 
which historic criticism runs more and more distinctly, 
and when, at some future day our literature has gotten 
over the shallows of naturalism, and dares to speak of 
faith, this will be the Cromwell shown. He may not 
be counted a man equal to Moses, but all that is most 
distinctive and greatest in his life will as certainly be re- 
ferred to a supernatural and divine movement in him. 

And how many characters are there in the history of 
our modern world, who can as little be conceived on the 
footing of mere nature, as these. Savonarola, the 
“fanatic” of history, will emerge, not unlikely, clad in 
the honors of a prophet. So of Columbus, Fenelon, 
Fox, Franke, and a thousand others, who walked, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, by a supernatural instigation 
— they were nothing, it will be seen, save by the secret 
inspiration that bore them on. And how many of God’s 
little ones, living and dying in obscurity, have yet done 
as great wonders in his name, as if they had been 
teachers and heroes. 

But why is it, some will ask, that we have only to 
hear of these things, and do not see them? Why must 
we know them only through a degree of distance that 
takes away knowledge? But the truth is not exactly 
so. Wecomea great deal closer to them than we think. 
Having had this great question of supernatural fact upon 
my hands now for a number of years, in a determination 
also to be concluded by no mere conventionalities, to 
observe, inquire, listen, and judge, I have been surprised 


458 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT 


to find how many things were coming to my knowledge 
and acquaintance, that most persons take it for granted 
are utterly incredible, except in what they call the age 
of miracles and apostolic gifts ; that is, in the first three 
centuries of the church. Indeed, they are become so 
familiar, after only a few years of attention thus 
directed, and without inquiring after them, that their 
unfamiliar and strange look is gone; they even appear 
to belong, more or less commonly, to the church and 
the general economy of the Spirit. 

I will instance, first of all, a case not so clearly 
religious, but explicable in no way, by the mere causal- 
ities of nature. As Isat by the fire, one stormy No- 
vember night, in a hotel parlor, in the Napa Valley of 
California, there came in a most venerable and benig- 
nant looking person, with his wife, taking their seats 
in the circle. The stranger, as I afterward learned, 
was Captain Yonnt, a man who came over into Califor- 
nia, as a trapper, more than forty years ago. Here he 
has lived, apart from the great world and its questions, 
acquiring an immense landed estate, and becoming a 
kind of acknowledged patriarch in the country. His 
tall, manly person, and his gracious, paternal look, as 
totally unsophisticated in the expression, as if he had 
never heard of a philosophic doubt or question in his 
life, marked him as the true patriarch. ‘The conversa- 
tion turned, I know not how, on spiritism and the 
modern necromancy, and he discovered a degree of in- 
clination to believe in the reported mysteries. His wife, 
a much younger and apparently Christian person, inti- 
mated that probably he was predisposed to this kind 
of faith, by a very peculiar experience of his own, and 
evidently desired that he might be drawn out by some 
intelligent discussion of his queries. 


IN OUR OWN TIMES 459 


At my request, he gave me his story. About six or 
seven years previous, in a mid-winter’s night, he had a 
dream, in which he saw what appeared to be a company 
of emigrants, arrested by the snows of the mountains, 
and perishing rapidly by cold and hunger. He noted 
the very cast of the scenery, marked by a huge perpen- 
dicular front of white rock cliff; he saw the men cut- 
ting off what appeared to be tree tops, rising out of 
deep gulfs of snow ; he distinguished the very features 
of the persons, and the look of their particular distress. 
He woke, profoundly impressed with the distinctness 
and apparent reality of his dream. At length he fell 
asleep, and dreamed exactly the same dream again. In 
the morning he could not expel it from his mind. \ Fall- 
ing in, shortly, with an old hunter comrade, he told 
him the story, and was only the more deeply impressed, 
by his recognizing, without hesitation, the scenery of 
the dream. This comrade came over the Sierra, by 
the Carson Valley Pass, and declared that a spot in the 
pass answered exactly to his description. By this the 
unsophisticated patriarch was decided. He immedi- 
ately collected a company of men, with mules and 
blankets, and all necessary provisions. The neigh- 
bors were laughing, meantime, at his credulity. “No 
matter,” said he, “I am able to do this, and I will, for 
I verily believe that the fact is according to my dream.” 
The men were sent into the mountains, one hundred 
and fifty miles distant, directly to the Carson Valley 
Pass. And there they found the company, in exactly 
the condition of the dream, and brought in the remnant 
alive. 

A gentleman present said, ‘* You need have no doubt 
of this ; for we Californians all know the facts, and the 
names of the families brought in, who now look upon 


460 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT 


our venerable friend as a kind of saviour.” These 
names he gave, and the places where they reside, and I 
found, afterward, that the California people were ready, 
every where, to second his testimony. 

Nothing could be more natural than for the good- 
hearted patriarch himself to add that the brightest thing 
in his life, and that which gave him greatest joy, was 
his simple faith in that dream. I thought also I could 
see, in that joy, the glimmer of a true Christian love and 
life, into which, unawares to himself, he had really 
been entered by that faith. Let any one attempt now 
to account for the coincidences of that dream, by mere 
natural causalities, and he will be glad enough to ease 
his labor, by the acknowledgment of a supernatural 
Providence. 

I fell in also, in that new world, with a different and 
more directly Christian example, in the case of an ac- 
quaintance, whom I had known for the last twenty 
years; an educated man, in successful practice as a 
physician; a man who makes no affectations of piety, 
and puts on no airs of sanctimony; living always in a 
kind of jovial element, and serving every body but 
himself. He laughs at the current incredulity of men, 
respecting prayer, and relates many instances, out of 
his own experience, to show — for that is his doctrine 
—that God will certainly hear every man’s prayer, if 
only he is honest in it. Among others, he gave the fol- 
lowing : — He had hired his little house, of one room, 
in a new trading town that was planted last year, 
agreeing to give a rent for it of ten dollars per month. 
At length, on the day preceding the rent day, he found 
that he had nothing in hand to meet the payment, and 
could not see at all whence the money was to come. 
Consulting with his wife, they agreed that prayer, so 


IN OUR OWN TIMES 461 


often tried, was their only hope. They went, accord- 
ingly, to prayer, and found assurance that their want 
should be supplied. That was the end of their trouble, 
and there they rested, dismissing farther concern. But 
the morning came, and the money did not. The rent 
owner made his appearance earlier than usual. As he 
entered the door, their hearts began to sink, whispering 
that now, for once, they must give it up, and allow 
that prayer had failed. But before the demand was 
made, a neighbor coming in, called out the untimely 
visitor, engaging him in conversation, a few minutes, 
at the door. Meantime a stranger came in, saying, 
De: , I owe you ten dollars, for attending me in 
a fever, at such a time, and here is the money.” He 
could muster no recollection, either of the man or of 
the service, but was willing to be convinced, and so had 
the money in hand, after all, when the demand was 
made. When Stilling and Franke recite their multi- 
tudes of specific answers to prayer, their reports are very 
hastily discredited by many, because of their strange- 
ness. But I have heard so many examples, personally, 
of the kind just cited, that I begin to think they are 
even common. 

Nothing is farther off from the Christian expectation 
of our New England communities than the gift of 
tongues. So distant is their practical habit from any 
belief in the possible occurrence, that not even the 
question occurs to their thought. And yet, a very 
near Christian friend, intelligent in the highest degree, 
and perfectly reliable to me as my right hand, who was 
present at a rather private, social gathering of Chris- 
tian disciples, assembled to converse and pray together, 
as in reference to some of the higher possibilities of 
Christian sanctification, relates that, after one of the 





462 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT 


brethren had been speaking, in a strain of discouraging 
-self-accusation, another present shortly rose, with a 
strangely beaming look, and, fixing his eye on the con- 
fessing brother, broke out in a discourse of sounds, 
wholly unintelligible, though apparently a true lan- 
guage, accompanying the utterances with a very 
strange and peculiarly impressive gesture, such as he 
never made at any other time; coming finally to a kind 
of pause, and commencing again, as if at the same 
point, to go over in English, with exactly the same 
gestures, what had just been said. It appeared to be 
an interpretation, and the matter of it was, a beauti- 
fully emphatic utterance of the great principle of self- 
renunciation, by which the desired victory over self is 
to be obtained. There had been no conversation re- 
specting gifts of any kind, and no reference to their 
possibility. The circle were astounded by the demon- 
stration, not knowing what to make of it. The instinct 
of prudence threw them on observing a general silence, 
and it is a curious fact that the public in H have 
never, to this hour, been startled by so much as a 
rumor of the gift of tongues, neither has the name of 
the speaker been associated with so much as a surmise 
of the real or supposed fact, by which he would be, 
perhaps, unenviably distinguished. It has been a 
great trial to him, it is said, to submit. himself to 
this demonstration; which has recurred several times. 

I have heard also of as many as three distinct cases 
of healing near at hand; one where a father whose 
nearly grown-up daughter, supposed to be near to 
death, under the ravages of a brain fever, was per- 
mitted, in answer to his prayers, to see her rise up 
almost immediately, and the next day walking forth 
completely well; one where a bad and dangerous swell- 





7 IN OUR OWN TIMES 463 


ing was immediately cured; another where a sick man 
was restored, when life was despaired of by his family. 

In addition to these more domestic examples, I be- 
came acquainted, about two years ago, in a distant 
part of the world, with an English gentleman, whose 
faith in the gift of healing had been established by his 
own personal exercise of it. He was a man whose con- 
nections and culture, whose well-formed, tall, and robust 
looking person, whose beautifully simple and humble 
manners, and whose blameless, universally respected 
life among strangers not of the same faith, and know- 
ing him only by his virtues and the sacrifices he was 
making for his opinions, were so many conspiring tokens 
winning him a character of confidence, that excluded 
any rational distrust of his representations. He gave 
me a full account, in manuscript, of some of the cases 
in which the healing power appeared to be given him, 
with liberty to use them, as may best serve the con- 
venience of my present subject. 

It became a question with him, soon after his con- 
version, whether, as he had been healed spiritually, 
he ought not also to expect and receive the healing of 
his body by the same faith; for he had then been an 
invalid for a long time, with only a slender hope of 
recovery. After a hard struggle of mind, he was able, 
dismissing all his prescribed remedies, to throw himself 
on God, and was immediately and permanently made 
whole. 

At length, one of his children, whom he had with 
_ him, away from home, was taken ill with a scarlet fever. 
And “now the question was,” I give his own words, 
“what was to be done? The Lord had indeed healed 
my own sicknesses, but would he heal my son? I con- 
ferred with a brother in the Lord, who, having no faith 


464 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT 


in Christ’s healing power, urged me to send instantly 
for the doctor, and dispatched his groom on horseback 
to fetch him. Before the doctor arrived, my mind was 
filled with revelation on the subject. I saw that I had 
fallen into a snare, by turning away from the Lord’s 
healing hand, to lean on medical skill. I felt griev- 
ously condemned in my conscience. A fear also fell 
on me, that if I persevered in this unbelieving course, 
my son would die, as his eldest brother had. The 
symptoms in both were precisely similar. The doctor 
arrived. My son, he said, was suffering from a scarlet 
fever, and medicine should be sent immediately. While 
he stood prescribing, I resolved to withdraw the child, 
and cast him on the Lord. And when he was gone, I 
called the nurse and told her to take the child into the 
nursery and lay him on the bed. I then fell on my 
knees confessing the sin I had committed against the 
Lord’s healing power. I also prayed most earnestly 
that it would please my Heavenly Father to forgive 
my sin, and to show that he forgave it, by causing the 
fever to be rebuked. I received a mighty conviction 
that my prayer was heard, and I arose and went to 
the nursery, at the end of a long passage, to see what 
the Lord had done, and on opening the door, to my 
astonishment, the boy was sitting up in his bed, and on 
seeing me cried out, ‘I am quite well and want to have 
my dinner.’ In an hour he was dressed, and well, and 
eating his dinner; and when the physic arrived it was 
cast out of the window. Next morning the doctor 
returned, and on meeting me at the garden gate, he 
said, ‘I hope your son is no worse!’ ‘ He is very well, 
I thank you,’ said I, in reply. ‘ What can you mean?’ 
rejoined the doctor. ‘I will tell you, come in and sit 
down.’ I then told him all that had occurred, at which 


IN OUR OWN TIMES 465 


he fairly gasped with surprise. ‘May I see your son?’ 
he asked. ‘Certainly, doctor, but I see that you do 
not believe.’ We proceeded up stairs, and my son 
was playing with his brother, on the floor. The doctor 
felt his pulse and said, ‘ Yes, the fever is gone.’ Find- 
ing also a fine, healthy surface on his tongue, he added, 
‘Yes, he is quite well; I suppose it was the crisis of his 
disease!’ ” 

Another of the cases which he reports shows more 
fully the working of his own mind, on the instant of 
healing. It was the case of a poor man’s child, who had 
heard him advocate the faith of healing, and, now that 
the physician, after attending him for many months of 
illness, had given the little patient up, saying that he 
could do no more, the parents sent for him, in their ex- 
tremity, to come and heal their son. He replied to the 
father, “ My dear friend, I can not heal your son, I can 
do nothing to help him. All that I can do is to ask you 
to kneel down and pray with me, to Christ, that we may 
know what is his will in this matter.” “He immedi- 
ately knelt down with me, and,” the written account 
continues, “‘my prayer was a reminding of the Lord 
Jesus Christ of his mercy to the sick, when he was on 
the earth, and that he never sent any sick away, un- 
healed. I then presented the petition of the father and 
mother, that their son might be healed, and besought 
the Lord to show what his will was in the case. Whilst 
I was making the supplication, it was revealed to me, 
through the Holy Spirit, that I was to lay hands on the 
boy, and receiving, at the time, great faith to do so, 
I arose and, not wishing to be observed by the father, 
I laid my hand on the lad’s head, and said in a low tone 
of voice —‘I lay my hand on thee in the name of Jesus 
Christ.’ In an instant I saw color rush into his pale 


466 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT 


cheeks, and it seemed as if a glow of health was given, 
insomuch that I said involuntarily, ‘I think your son 
will recover.’ I then hastily left the room. In less 
than an hour, the mother came to my house and insisted 
on seeing me, to tell me the wonderful things that had 
happened to her son. The result was that the boy was 
about the next day.” 

The other cases narrated by him are scarcely less re- 
markable. At the same time, he admits, with charac- 
teristic ingenuousness, that no such gift has been 
vouchsafed him now, for a number of years, and that 
most of the expectations he had in connection with the 
apostolic wonder, thus restored, have been disappointed. 
What God’s design was, in the gift thus temporarily 
bestowed, is a profound mystery to him, and he submits 
himself calmly in it to the better, though inscrutable, 
wisdom of God. Probably enough, the reason of his 
gift was exhausted in affording, to these truths of faith, 
that evidence which is necessary to their just equilib- 
rium. 

I have hesitated much whether to speak of a case that, 
in all its varied stages, has been under my own personal 
inspection, and I am decided by the consideration that, 
while it shows no healing, by a gift, it does show, only 
the more convincingly, a supernatural grace of healing 
entered into the faith of the subject herself. She is an 
intelligent, well-educated young woman, of a more than 
commonly strong and somewhat restive natural temper- 
ament, the daughter a Christian man, living in rather 
depressed circumstances, but profoundly respected for 
his character. Eleven years ago this daughter, who 
before had begun to show symptoms of disease, in a 
considerable distortion of the spine, became a great 
sufferer in the still worse complications of a hip disease. 


IN OUR OWN TIMES 467 


' [have never looked on such scenes of distress in any 
other case, and hope I may never witness such again. 
Several times she was given up by her physicians, and 
her death was expected daily ; I should hardly tell the 
whole truth, if I did not say, longed for, even more 
constantly. After about two years, however, her dis- 
ease took a more quiet shape, and the suffering was 
greatly diminished. Thus she lay for nine long years 
of helplessness, with both feet drawn up under her, and 
one of them so close that it was difficult to get in a 
thickness of cloth under the knee, to prevent inflamma- 
tion. The physicians agreed that there was nothing 
more to be done, and that she must wait her time; 
which, after a while, she had learned to do, with the 
sweetest patience and equanimity. Every impulse in 
her restive nature was now tamed to God’s will, and 
she blessed the hand which was pressing her so close to 
the divine friendship. If inquired of, at any time, 
whether she would like to get well, she uniformly an- 
swered, “No”; adding that she was afraid she might 
not stand fast, but might turn away from her fidelity, 
in which she was now so profoundly peaceful and 
happy. 

But it occurred to her finally that, if God could re- 
store her, he might also keep her, and the question 
arose whether she ought not to trust him. At last, 
she was beginning to think it might be her duty to be- 
lieve in God’s healing as well as keeping, and in that 
manner to pray. Having some attack of acute disease, 
a physician was called in, and, after the attack was 
quelled, he began to give some hopeful answers to her 
queries about the possibility of a restoration of her 
limbs. Shortly before this, too, her father, who was 
visited with a great accumulation of trials, went through 


468 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT 


an awful struggle with God’s justice, rising up against 
him in agonies of accusation. But he was quelled and 
comforted, and filled, as the result, with all divinest 
peace. And shortly after that, he had a dream, which 
presented his daughter as well, completely healed, be- 
fore him. But it raised no expectation, either then or 
afterward, and he does not refer to it now as having 
had any connection at all with the subsequent facts — 
he does not much confide indreams. But his daughter 
was beginning now to believe that she might be made 
well, and really set herself to it as her settled faith; 
and he himself was allowing, often, the thought that 
possibly it might somehow be otherwise with her. 
Remedies were not discarded, but applied faithfully and 
perseveringly. The problem was, how to use natural 
causes with a faith in supernatural helps. In a short 
time the limbs were brought down, one of them to 
touch the floor, then both, then she stood, and next she 
walked. I knew the change that was going on, but, 
not having seen her for some weeks, I was none the less 
surprised, when walking in a neighboring street, to see 
her skipping down a high flight of steps, with scarcely 
a perceptible token of lameness. Ask her family now 
what this means, and by what power it has come to 
pass, and they answer promptly, “by the power of 
God.” She herself says the same, answering out of her 
own consciousness. She believes that her physician 
has done well, and that God sent him to be a minister 
to her faith, but she declares that she has all the while 
felt the vigor coming into her by and through her faith, 
and that, when she first stood, she consciously stood by 
a divine power, and could no more have stood without 
the sense of it, or the day before it came, than she could 
have supported the world. This protestation of hers I 


IN OUR OWN TIMES 469 


feel bound to honor; though very well aware that the 
case may be turned, by saying that the second causes 
appealed to wrought the cure. But isit not more philo- 
sophical, a great deal, to take the inward testimony of 
the subject, and see the higher consciousness of her 
faith struggling with the remedies, and contributing a 
force superior, in fact, to all remedies? Indeed, I have 
a peculiar satisfaction in the facts of this case, just be- 
cause the natural and supernatural are so rationally and 
soundly combined. The problem of their possible con- 
currence is evenly held, and there is time enough occu- 
pied, in the cure, to show a process. ‘Go to the pool 
of Siloam, and wash’*—even Christ himself used 
nature as a means, to provoke the necessary faith, when 
nature had, in fact, no virtue in itself. 

I cite only one more witness ; a man who carries the 
manner and supports the office of a prophet, though with- 
out claiming the repute of it himself. He is a fugitive 
from slavery, whose name I had barely heard, but whose 
character and life have been known to many in our com- 
munity, for the last twenty years. He called at my door, 
about the time I was sketching the outline of this chap- 
ter, requesting an interview. As I entered the room, 
it was quite evident that he was struggling with a good 
deal of mental agitation, though his manner was firm, 
and even dignified. He said immediately, that he had 
come tome “with a message from de Lord.” I replied, 
that I was glad if he had any so good thing as that for 
me, and hoped he would deliver it faithfully. He told 
me, in terms of great delicacy, and with a seriousness 
that excluded all appearance of a design to win his way 
by flattery, that he had conceived the greatest personal 
interest in me, because, in hearing me once or twice, he 
had discovered that God was teaching me, and discoyer- 


470 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT 


ing himself to me in a way that was specially hopeful ; 
and that, for this very reason, he had been suffering the 
greatest personal burdens of feeling on my account. 
For more than a year he had been praying for me, and 
sometimes in the night, because of his apprehension that 
I had made a false step and been disobedient to the 
heavenly vision. During all this time, he had been 
struggling also with the question, whether he might 
come and see me, and testify his concern for me? One 
must be a very poor Christian, not to be deeply touched ' 
by such a discovery —one of the humblest of God’s © 
children, a stranger, trembling and watching for him, 
in his place of obscurity, and daring, only with the great- 
est difficulty, to come and disburden his heart. 

I asked him to explain, and not to suffer any feeling 
of constraint. In a manner of the greatest deference 
possible, and with a most singularly beautiful skill, he 
went on, gathering round his point, and keeping it all 
the while concealed, as he was nearing it, straightening 
up his tall, manly form, dropping out his Africanisms, 
rising in the port of his language, beaming with a look 
of intelligence and spiritual beauty, all in a manner to 
second his prophetic formulas — “ The Lord said to me” 
thus and thus; “ The Lord has sent me to say ;” till 
I also, as I gazed upon him, was obliged internally to 
confess, “ verily, Nathan the prophet has come again !” 
It was really a scene such as any painter might look a 
long time to find — such dignity in one so humble ; ex- 
pression so lofty, and yet so gentle and respectful ; the 
air of a prophet so commanding and positive, and yet 
in such divine authority, as to allow no sense of forward- 
ness or presumption. 

It came out, finally, as the burden of the message, that 
on a certain occasion, and in reference to a certain public 


IN OUR OWN TIMES 471 


matter, I had undertaken that which could not but with- 
draw me from God’s teaching, and was certain to ob- 
scure the revelations otherwise ready and waiting to be 
made. “Yes,” Ireplied, “but there was nothing wrong 
in what I undertook to set forward. It brought no 
scandal on religion. It concerned, you will admit, the 
real benefit of the public, in all future times.” ‘“ Ah, 
yes,” he answered, “it was well enough to be done, but 
it was not foryou. God had other and better things for 
you. He was calling you to himself, and it was yours 
to go with him, not to be laboring in things more prop- 
erly belonging to other men.” Ihad given him the plea, 
by which, drawing on my natural judgment, I had jus- 
tified myself in going into the engagement in question. 
Indeed, to have had any scruple on this account, I have 
no doubt, would be commonly considered, by intelligent 
persons, to be even a weakness. And yet, I am obliged 
to confess to a strong, and even prevalent impression, 
that my humble brother was right. For the real stress 
of his message lay, not so much in the particular instance 
referred to, as in that more general infirmity or mistake, 
which the instance might be used to represent ; viz., the 
tendency of every most earnest soul to be diverted from 
its aims, by things external. His spiritual perceptions 
were deep enough to lay hold of ageneral infirmity, which 
was only the more impressively corrected by a particular 
example, and, in this manner, his piercing words of love 
were answered by the settled assent of my Christian 
consciousness. « 

I thanked him for his message, and even looked upon 
him with a kind of reverence as we parted. I found, on 
inquiry, that he was a man without blame, industrious, 
pure, a husband and father faithful to his office, and 
always in the same high key of Christian living. But 


472 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT 


the people of his color, knowing him well, and having 
nothing to say against him, could yet offer no opinion at 
all concerning him. He was plainly enough a strange 
being to them; they could make nothing of him. The 
most they could say was that he is always the same. 

I have since visited him, in his little shop, and drawn 
out of him the story of his life. He became a Christian 
about the time of his arrival at manhood, and gives 
a very clear and beautiful account of his conversion. 
And the Lord, he says, told him, at that time, that he 
should be free, soul and body. To which he answered, 
“Yea, Lord, I know it.” A promise that was after- 
ward fulfilled in a very strange and wonderful deliver- 
ance. I observed that, in the account he gave me, he 
was continually saying, in the manner of the prophets, 
“the Lord said,” and “the Lord commanded,” and 
“the Lord promised,” and I called his attention to the 
fact, asking — what do you mean by this? Do you hear 
words audibly spoken? ‘Oh, no.” ‘“ What then? Do 


you think what appears to be said to you, and call that 


the saying of the Lord?” “Yes, I think it — but that 
is not all.” ‘How, then, do you know that it is any 
thing more than ’s thought?” ‘“ Well, I know it, 





I feel it to be not from me, and I can tell you things 


that show it to be so;” reciting facts, which, if they 
are true, prove beyond a question the certainty of some 
illumination not of himself. ‘ Why, then,” I asked, 
“does God teach you in this manner and not me? I 
-feel a strong conviction, sometimes, that I am in the 
will, I know not how, and the directing counsel of God, 
but I could never say, as you do, ‘the Lord said thus 
to me.’” “Ah,” said he, “but you have the means— 
you can read as I can not, you have great learning. 
But I am a poor, ignorant child, and God does with me 


- 


IN OUR OWN TIMES 473 


just as he can.” Whatever may be thought of his reve- 
lations, none, I think, will deny him, in his reply, the 
credit of a true philosophy. What can be worthier of 
God than to be the guide of this faithful, and other- 
wise dejected man, making up for his privations of ig- 
norance, by the fuller and more open vision of himself? 

And yet I should leave a wrong impression, were I 
not to say that this Christian fugitive, this unlettered 
body servant, now, of Christ, as once of his earthly 
master, is deep in the wisdom of the scriptures, quotes 
them continually with a remarkable eloquence and pro- 
priety, and with a degree of insight which many of the 
best educated preachers might envy. He also believes 
that God has healed the sick, in many instances, in 
immediate connection with his prayers, giving the 
names and particulars without scruple. 

Such now are the kinds of religious exercises and 
demonstrations that are still extant, even in our own 
time, in certain walks of society. In that humbler 
stratum of life, where the conventionalities and carnal 
judgments of the world have less power, there are 
characters blooming in the holiest type of Christian 
love and beauty, who talk, and pray, and, as they think, 
operate apostolically, as if God were all to them that 
he ever was to the church, in the days of her primitive 
grace. And it is much to know that, while the higher 
tiers of the wise and prudent are assuming, so con- 
fidently, the absolute discontinuance of all apostolic 
gifts, there are yet, in every age, great numbers of 
godly souls, and especially in the lower ranges of life, 
to whom the conventionalities of opinion are nothing, 
and the walk with God every thing, who dare to claim 
an open state with him; to pray with the same expec- 
tation, and to speak of faith in the same manner, as if 


474 AND STILL WE ARE SLOW 


they had lived in the apostolic times. And they are 
not the noisy, violent class, who delight in the bodily 
exercises that profit little, mistaking the fumes of 
passion for the revelations of God, but they are, for 
the most part, such as walk in silence, and dwell in the 
shades of obscurity. And that man has lived to little 
purpose, who has not learned that what the great world 
pities, and its teachers disallow, even though mixed 
with tokens of weakness, is many times deepest in 
truth, and closest to the real sublimities of life and 
religion. 


That I may not leave a wrong impression, or an 
impression that is not according to truth, I feel obliged 
to add, in concluding this chapter, that I do not seem 
to be as positive and full in my faith on this subject as 
I ought to be, and as my arguments themselves may 
seem to indicate. As regards the general truth that 
supernatural facts, such as healings, tongues, and other 
gifts may as well be manifested now as at any former 
time, and that there has never been a formal discontin- 
uance, I am perfectly satisfied. I know no proof to the 
contrary that appears to me to have a straw’s weight. 
And yet, when I come to the question of being in such 
gifts, or of receiving into easy credit those who appear to 
be, I acknowledge that, for some reason, either because 
of some latent subjection to the conventionalities of 
philosophy, or to the worse conventionalities of sin, 
belief does not follow, save in a somewhat faltering and 
equivocal way. Arguments for the possibility are good, 
but evidences for the fact do not correspond. But there 
is nothing peculiar in this; it is even so with many great 
questions of God and immortality. The arguments are 
good and clear, but, for some reason, they do not make 


TO BELIEVE WHAT IS CREDIBLE 475 


faith, and we are still surprised to find, in our practice, 
that we only doubtfully believe. To believe these 
supernatural things, in the form of particular facts, is 
certainly difficult ; and how conscious are we, as we 
set ourselves to the questions, of the weakness of our 
vacillations! Pardon us, Lord, that when we make so 
much of mere credibilities and rationalities of opinion, 
we are yet so slow to believe that what we have shown 
to be credible and rational is actually coming to pass. 


CHAPTER XV 
CONCLUSION STATED.— USES AND RESULTS 


THE course of argument proposed in this treatise is 
now completed. It only remains to state, as definitely 
as may be, how far it goes, or in what way and degree 
it establishes the main point in issue ; and also to gather 
up some of the remote and subordinate results that 
appear to be involved in it. 

It was undertaken, mainly, to establish the credibility 
and historic fact of what is supernatural in the Christian 
gospels. The problem was, in fact, to frame an argu- 
ment that, on one hand, will virtually settle the ques- 
tion of a mythical origin of the gospels, without going 
into a direct controversy on that footing, where the 
points made are too many and loose to allow any very 
decisive result ; also to frame an argument that, avoid- 
ing, on the other, the issue of infallible inspiration, which 
involves insuperable difficulties in the statement, will yet 
virtually gain all that is sought for the Christian reve- 
lation under that issue ; viz., a genuine, comprehensive 
faith in its supernatural origin as a gift of God to man. 

The argument presented turns principally on two 
facts ; viz., the fact that we act supernaturally our- 
selves, which God and other created spirits may as well 
do as we; and the fact of sin, which is both a fact of 
universal observation and of universal consciousness. 
On the ground of these two facts, it has been shown, 
first, that nature is not the proper system of God, but 

476 


THE VERITY OF THE GOSPELS ATT 


only an inferior, subordinate, and merely instrumental 
part, and, in that sense, a part complemental to the 
grand supernatural empire, in which the real system of 
God is centered; secondly, that what is commonly 
called nature is no such integer of order and harmony 
as is commonly assumed, but is, in fact, a condition of 
unnature, being a scheme of causalities disordered by 
sin, and set on courses of retributive action that imply 
perpetual misdirection ; so that, apart from a coeternal 
factor of supernatural redemption, what the naturalists 
regard as the real totality, or system of nature, is not 
only become a whole that groaneth and travaileth in 
pain together, but must inevitably continue to groan, 
till relief and deliverance are brought, by some force 
supernatural that is equal to the occasion. 

A supernatural work of redemption becomes, in this 
view, a kind of intellectual necessity ; because other- 
wise the integrity and real unity of counsel, in a proper 
frame of order, appear to be wanting. The strongest 
possible presumption is raised, in this manner, for just 
such a work as Christianity undertakes and declares to 
be undertaken—as it should be—from before the 
foundation of the world; a work that is no afterthought, 
but enters into the original unity of the great scheme 
of existence itself. When Christ appears, therefore, we 
take up the record of his life, and show that he is not 
only a supernatural person, as all men are, but a super- 
natural person in the still higher degree of being also 
superhuman ; that he has come into our world as not 
being of it, that his character can be nowise classed with 
human characters; in short, that he is a living, self- 
evidencing miracle in his person. Then, that he should 
perform miracles, is scarcely less than a necessary con- 
sequence. We also show that Christianity, as a plan 


=< 


478 THE ARGUMENT ESTABLISHES 


of supernatural grace, contains hidden marks of verity, 
which only appear, when it is held up in a light to 
show them and which, as being latent in this manner, 
could not be of man. We have also shown that the 
world itself is governed in the interest of Christianity, 
and that supernatural facts are occurring now, or have 
never been finally discontinued. It may be too much 
to claim that we have unanswerably established the 
fact of miracles performed in our time —it is more 
exact to say, that we have shown the assumption of 
their non-performance, of which so much is made by 
many critics, to be groundless, and that their contin- 
uance, which may be asserted with sufficient reason, 
they can no way disprove. 

What now is the precise bearing of all this on the 
historic verity and the supernatural origin of the gos- 
pels, or of the Christian revelation generally? As 
regards the matter of an exact verbal inspiration, noth- 
ing directly ; that is a question waived, or kept out of 
sight ; and yet the mind is brought to a landing place, 
where, without being perplexed by impossible defini- 
tions, and strained arguments in their behalf, it will 
acquiesce, as it were, naturally, in the fact of a general, 
undefined inspiration, having no longer any quarrel to 
maintain, because the conditions of quarrel are taken 
away. ‘The question of inspired verity is not left, by 
our argument, in any such position, as when it is held 
that the moral ideas and spiritual truths only of the 
scriptures are infallibly given, and their historie mat- 
ter left to be disposed of as it may; for the great, com- 
manding, principal facts are shown to be historically 
true. If any debate is to be had, it must be regarding 
certain subordinate and particular facts, that are ques- 
tioned, because of some specially suspicious indications, 


THE VERITY OF THE GOSPELS 479 


that stumble belief. And little stress is likely to be 
laid on these, because the working plan of Christianity, 
as a regenerative, supernatural grace, is now on foot as 
a verity already established ; so that the mind is set on 
a higher plane of thought than when it only admits a 
Christianity qualified, or about to be qualified, down to 
a mere doctrine of nature and natural development, and 
is prepared, in that manner, to be stumbled by the 
smallest difficulties. 

The mythical origin of the gospels is, in this manner, 
refuted, without any particular notice of its proofs, by 
a process farther back and more summary. To untwist, 
one by one, its perverse ingenuities, and wade through 
its mires of false learning, will be necessary to no one who 
has found a Christ among men, impossible to be classed 
with men; doing his miracles, and erecting, on the 
earth, his supernatural kingdom. Not even Dr. Strauss 
would ever have undertaken this kind of argument, if he 
had not first assumed the incredibility of any thing 
supernatural ; in which assumption, after all, the main 
plausibility of his argument consists. 

It is very true that we have not proved the historic ver- 
ity ofallthe miracles. We have only shown that Christ 
was a miracle himself, in his own person, and performed 
miracles. Whether he performed this or that miracle, ex- 
actly as related, may yet be questioned. Some of the facts 
reported as miracles, looking only at the form of the 
language, may be otherwise explained ; as, for example, 
the disturbing of the water by the angel in the pool of Be- 
thesda ; where it may have been the writer’s intention, 
only to give the current faith or impression of the time. 
If any one chooses to deny the cursing of the fig-tree, 
because it was an act of ill-nature, he can take that low 
view of the transaction, only he islikely, when confronted 


480 THE ARGUMENT ESTABLISHES 


with the suggestion that it was done, as an eloquent exhi- 
bition of the great moral truth, that God will blast every 
tree that bears no fruit — a truth which could not be as 
impressively taught in words — to feel the lowness and 
perversity of his construction too sensibly, to find much 
comfort in it. The miraculous nativity of Jesus may 
be questioned, by any one who can see nothing in it but 
an extravagance shocking to reason, or a myth, in the 
semblance of narrative, that displaces any supposition of 
historic verity in the fact. But, given the fact that an 
incarnation is wanted, that Christ is declared to be the 
Word incarnate, and shown, }by his character, |to have 
come into the world as not being of it, what more can 
be needed than to put the objector on the question, in 
what other manner, a real incarnation of the divine in 
the human could be accomplished, that should be as 
_ close to human feeling, and as strictly historic, in its 
introduction, as this of the miraculous nativity? And 
if the objector will but let his imagination rise to the 
real pitch of the subject, it will be strange, if he does not 
even begin to feel himself kindled, with Mary, in her 
song of triumph, and accept the whole history, as one 
transcendently beautiful and sublime. In the same 
manner, any one is at liberty still, as far as our argu- 
ment is concerned, to speak of discrepancies between 
the gospels, or between the Acts of the Apostles 
and the Epistles, but now that Christ, and his mira- 
cles, and his supernatural kingdom, are seen standing 
forth, as facts already established, facts which can not 
be shaken by any mere discrepancies in the narra- 
tive, he is much more likely to accept these apparent 
disagreements, in matters trivial, as confirmations of 
the Christian truth, and use them as commendations of 
it to our confidence. 


THE VERITY OF THE GOSPELS 481 


But it may be objected, contrary to this, by some over- 
strenuous, or overpunctual believer, that our argument, 
which stops short cf proving every thing, leaves a gate 
opened to every sort of looseness; that, as the issue is 
here qualified, a war begun on each particular fact will, 
finally, cut off, in detail, all that seemed to be established 
in the general ; so that nothing will, in fact, be left. I 
think otherwise. The difficulty never has been to estab- 
lish this or that miracle, but to establish any miracle at 
all, or the credibility of any. One miracle proved, or 
the credibility of one, is virtually an end of all debate, 
for the back of skepticism is there broken. Besides, the 
argument we institute puts the doubter in a new and 
advanced position. He has verified Christ, the grand, 
central wonder, the disorder and fall of nature, the need 
of a supernatural grace and power, even to complete the 
intelligent unity of God’s plan, and, what is more, the 
fact that he himself exists in a heavenly, supernatural 
kingdom, where he meets, on every side, the manifested 
love and reconciling grace of God. The atmosphere of 
doubt and debate is already cleared. To break loose 
now, on some particular miracle, or question of fact, is 
impossible. Even if he gain his point, he is the loser ; 
for he only mars the glory of a faith that is already 
established, and spots with blemish the religion that 
already has a right to his faith. He does not break 
Christianity down, he only makes it a faith less welcome 
andclear. In such’a position, he will naturally prefer to 
have the gospel of his faith strong as it may be ; holding 
always a presumption against the suggestions of doubt, 
and allowing to all the minor points of difficulty, that 
favorable construction by which they will be cleared. 

On the whole, we seem to make out, by our argument, 
a vindication of the supernatural truth of the gospels, 


482 HOW RELATED TO THE METHOD 


that is not only sufficient, but practically complete, and, 
besides, one that has many advantages. We go into no 
debate about the canon, which is likely to issue in a 
manner that is not really convincing ; westart no claim 
of verbal inspiration, such as takes away the confidence 
and establishes the rational disrespect of the skeptic, 
before the argument is begun ; we sharpen no point of 
infallibility down, so as to prick and fasten each par- 
ticular iota of the book, afterward to concede variations 
of copy, defects of style, mistakes in numerals, and as 
many other little discrepancies as we must. But we 
try to establish, by a process that is intelligent and 
worthy of respect, the historic outposts, Christ and his 
miracles, and with these, also, the grand working-plan 
of a supernatural grace and salvation. After this, the 
mind will gravitate, as of course, toward a general, 
inclusive, comprehensive faith, and we shall find no- 
language that so fitly expresses our conviction, as to say 
— All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is 
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for 
instruction in righteousness. 

Superficially viewed, there is a certain parallelism be- 
tween this argument for the supernatural in religion, 
and that of Mr. Parker and the naturalistic school 
generally against it, and it is possible that some will be 
perverse enough to accuse me of a similar treatment of 
revelation. I will never condescend to widen, purposely, 
or for reasons politic and prudential, the distance be- 
tween me and another who has offended the Christian 
public. But it may show the method of my argument 
more exactly, if I sketch a brief comparison — just as I 
have been referring heretofore to Mr. Parker, to get 
light and shade for my subject, without raising sd 
special controversy with him. 


OF NATURALISM 483 


Mr. Parker undertakes to frame a rational view of re- 
ligion, that sets it on the footing of nature. I have 
undertaken to frame a rational view of religion, that 
comprehends nature and the supernatural, as coeternal 
factors in the universal system of God. 

He maintains the complete universality of natural 
laws, and refuses to believe in a miracle, because it is a 
suspension of the laws of nature. I believe, as firmly, 
in the universality of laws, but not of natural laws ; 
maintaining that the human will itself is regulated by 
no laws of natural causality, and has power even to act 
upon the lines of cause and effect in nature. God, of 
course, may do the same; which, if he do it, is a miracle. 
Not a miracle because the laws of nature are suspended ; 
for they are not, but are only varied in their action by 
the intervention of a power external, as when we vary 
their results ourselves. Yet still there is a law for the 
intervention of God, viz., the law of his end ; which, 
though it be no term of nature, but a rule of intelligence 
and rational sovereignty, would require him to perform 
the same miracle again, a thousand times over, in exactly 
the same conditions. 'Todefine a miracle, therefore, to 
be a suspension of the laws of nature, is irrational and 
wholly below the subject. With Mr. Parker, I believe 
in no such miracle. And yet, in the result of this argu- 
ment, I am brought to accept all the miracles of Christ, 
while he rejects them all. 

Mr. Parker takes up the admission, so frequently and 
gratuitously made, that miracles and all supernatural 
gifts have been discontinued, and are now no longer 
credible, and presses the inference that, being now in- 


- eredible, they never were any less so; that pushing 


them back, in time, is only a trick to get their incredi- 
bility so far off that we shall not feel it, and that the 


484 HOW RELATED TO THE METHOD 


only ingenuous conclusion is that, not occurring now, 
they never did occur. It is certainly a very remarkable 
turn, as I think any one must admit, that supernatural 
facts, being credible down to some certain year of the 
world’s almanac, then begin to be incredible; incredible 
in their very nature, so that any one who pretends to 
believe in them is, of course, to be set down as an 
enthusiast, or a charlatan. Mr. Parker takes the 
assumption tendered, and reasons from it. I reject the 
assumption, and his inferences with it. 

Mr. Parker has much to say of inspiration. He be- 
lieves that every man will be inspired under fixed laws 
of nature, just according to his goodness. In maintain- 
ing that all God’s supernatural works, which include 
inspirations, of course, are ordered by fixed laws, I may 
seem to coincide. But the fixed laws of intelligence or 
counsel, the laws of reason as related to his end, are a 
very different matter from the fixed laws of causality in 
nature. Besides, if we look at the question with Chris- 
tian eyes, there appears to be a little inversion of 
method in the doctrine that, if men will be good, they 
shall be rewarded by a consequent inspiration. It 
would be as much more rational, as it is more Christian, 
to put the inspiration in advance of the goodness, and 
say that men will be good accordingly as God inspires 
them. Not even this will hold, however, for God no 
doubt exerts an inspiring force in men, to make them 
good, which they may even fatally obstruct by their 
perversity. The true doctrine of inspiration can not 
be stated in any such summary manner. All inspira- 
tions are acts of divine sovereignty, under laws of rea- 
son which regulate that sovereignty. And then there 
are two modes of inspiration, one that is concerned to 
re-establish the normal state of being, or the state of 


OF NATURALISM 485 


divine consciousness, in which the soul, as a free spirit, 
comes to abide and live in the divine movement, and is 
kept, strengthened, guided, exalted, by the inward rey- 
elation of God; where it may be truly said that the soul 
is inspired, accordingly as it yields itself ‘comformably 
to God’s will, and trustfully to the inspiring grace. The 
other mode of inspiration may be called the inspiration 
of use; where the doctrine is that God inspires men, 
according to the use he will make of them. And here 
the kinds, or qualities, are as many as the uses. He in- 
spires the shepherd, Amos, not to write Isaiah’s prophecy, 
but the prophecy of Amos. He inspires Bezaleel to de- 
vise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in 
brass, and in cutting of stones, and Moses to be the leader 
and lawgiver of his people. He will give the same man 
a variable inspiration, setting Paul, for example, in one 
mood of power, when he lays his scorching rebuke on the 
head of the Corinthians, and in a very different, when 
he chants, in the fifteenth chapter, his sublime lyric on 
the resurrection. It is doubtless true, also, that, as God 
has a place and a use for every man, so he has an in- 
spiration for him ; adding honor thus, and comfort, and 
capacity, to every employment. The degree also of this 
inspiration may be supposed to have some fixed relation 
to the faith and faithfulness of the subject; though it 
is difficult to say what we mean by degrees, where the 
kinds are and must be different. The doctrine of Mr. 
Parker wholly ignores or disallows this inspiration of 
use, and recognizes nothing but the inspiration of char- 
acter. If a prophet, therefore, writes a book of scrip- 
ture, with a higher inspiration than another man has, 
who writes nothing, it is because he is a better man. 
Let all men be good then, and all will be able to write 
as good books as he. A very convenient and short way 


486 HOW RELATED TO THE METHOD 


of letting down the honors of scripture; but it may be 
that God wants only a few men for this particular use, 
or to write books of scripture ; as he wanted only one 
to be a Moses, and one to be a Bezaleel. And if this 
be so, it is very certain that he will inspire as many as 
he wants, for the uses wanted, and no more. It may 
be that, as he never wants another Moses, so he never 
wants another book of scripture written, and it may be 
that he does. Should he ever want another, he will be 
able to qualify his man; if not, no other will be quali- 
fied. Meantime, it must be enough that he will have his 
own counsel, and will aid and qualify all men for the uses 
he appoints. On this ground, it is no such offense to 
reason, to suppose that God has inspired particular men 
to have a part in the written revelation of his will, as 
Mr. Parker thinks it to be, and the air of confidence he 
assumes, when setting forth the conditions, under which 
all men may have as good or the same inspiration as the 
writers of scripture, indicates rather a want of due con- 
sideration, than a philosophic superiority. God con- 
ducts things to their uses by laws of causality; spirits 
to their uses, by inspirations; and, as the different kinds 
of things; ponderable and imponderable, solid and fluid, 
elastic and inelastic, organic and inorganic, are kept to 
their uses by different kinds of laws, so it is but rational 
to believe that God will prepare men to their different 
places and uses, by different kinds of inspiration. 

I make no apology, then, for any look of parallelism 
that may be observed, between the shaping of my argu- 
ment and that of Mr. Parker. On the contrary, I pre- 
fer to recognize the fact, thus far indicated, that he 
is pressed by the real difficulties of the question, and 
conceives intelligently many of the points that must 
appear, in any genuinely intellectual solution. It has 


OF NATURAL THEOLOGY 487 


sometimes seemed to me that, with all his aversion to 
supernaturalism, he might as well be satisfied with the 
general solution I have given, upon the footing of super- 
naturalism, as with his own upon the footing of nature. 
Had he sufficiently weighed certain questions that are 
fundamental, but which he virtually ignores; had he 
determined what is the exact definition of the super- 
natural, as related to nature, and, in that manner, come 
upon the fact that we act supernaturally ourselves ; 
had he also brought his mind closely enough to the 
great question of sin, to expel all ambiguity concerning 
it — holding the fact of sin as positively, in the field of 
criticism, as he does when he attacks slavery as a re- 
former, and tracing that fact to its legitimate results — 
I see not how he could have escaped a different conclu- 
sion. Instead of making nature the kingdom of God, 
he would have made it the instrument only, or mere 
field of the kingdom; a theater in which the powers 
of the kingdom have their parts. Instead of looking 
for inspiration by the laws of nature, which, if the word 
has any meaning deeper than semblance, is even absurd, 
he would have seen it to be a fact supernatural. He 
would have found a place for prayer, better than a 
dumb-bell exercise before the terms of natural causality 
and consequence. His remorseless fidelity to a mis- 
taken argument would not have compelled him to rob 
the Christian scriptures of their glorious distinction, as 
a revelation of God. He would not have been obliged 
to spot the divine beauty of Christ, to reduce him to his 
own human level, or to shock his own better sense and 
that of the world, by giving out the expectation that other 
and better Christs will yet be developed, by the progress 
of his sinful race. Faith he would have discovered, as 
the sister of reason; grace, as the medicine of nature. 


488 HOW RELATED TO THE METHOD 


In a word, he would have been a Christian in his doe- 
trine, which now he is not; for, if there be any suffi- 
cient, infallible, and always applicable distinction, that 
separates a Christian from one who is not, it is the 
faith, practically held, of a supernatural grace or re- 
ligion. There is no vestige of Christian life in the 
working-plan of nature. Christianity exists only to 
have a remedial action upon the contents and condi- 
tions of nature. That is development ; this is regenera- 
tion. No one fatally departs from Christianity, who 
rests the struggles of holy character on help super- 
natural from God. No one really is in it, however 
plausible the semblance of his approach to it, who rests 
in the terms of morality, or self-culture, or self-magnet- 
izing practice. 


If the argument we have traced should be found to 
have established a solid conviction of truth, in the 
supernatural facts and powers of Christianity, it will 
go far to invert the relative opinion of nature and faith 
in all Christian believers, and must therefore work 
important changes in many things pertaining to the 
interests of the Christian truth. It must vary the 
estimate, for example, that is currently held of natural 
theology. It is even a principal distinction of our 
modern Christianity, that it has submitted itself, so 
implicitly, to the dominating ideas and fashions of the 
new religion, science, or supposed science, that passes 
by this name. It is a kind of revised Christianity, a 
gospel that is preached in the method, set up in the 
plane, saturated with the spirit, and even, where it is 
not suspected, compounded of the matter, of the science. 
The Christian schools begin with natural theology, 
because it is conceived to be fundamental, and the 


OF NATURAL THEOLOGY 489 


young men are long in disabusing themselves of their 
mistake ; for any thing which can be proved for religion 
out of nature, and in the field of natural reason, is con- 
ceived to be specially solid, and impossible to be doubted 
longer. All which I call a mistake, however, not be- 
cause of any positive mischief in deductions of this 
kind. The evil suffered is due, not so much to what 
our natural theology does, as to what it requires to be 
left undone ; or, to be more explicit, to the fact that it 
requires all supernatural evidences to give way to it, 
as being themselves a more questionable kind of verity ; 
even as the ill-favored and lean kine of Pharaoh’s dream 
devoured those which were better. The opposite pole 
is represented here by Dr. Henry More, who builds his 
argument for the existence of God, to a considerable 
degree, on the basis of supernatural facts; such as 
dreams, prophecies, premonitions, visions, revelations, 
and the like —a curious and striking evidence, when 
viewed in contrast with our present conceptions, of 
the change of mental position that may be wrought in 
the thinking world, in a comparatively brief space of 
time. The modern advances in science compelled the 
change, and it could not be resisted. Neither was it 
desirable that it should be ; for, when the new theology 
of nature is once qualified, by restoring the other pole 
of the subject, which belongs more distinctly to Chris- 
tianity, it will be found to have expelled multitudes of 
superstitious and unilluminated vagaries, necessary to be 
expelled, before it was possible to hold the supernatural 
evidences, in the manner of true intelligence necessary to 
their genuine effect. Then the two worlds of evidences 
are seen to be complementary to each other, and the 
argument for God, the Christian God, is complete as 
never before. 


490 HOW RELATED TO 


The evil in our present stage of thought is that nat- 
ural theology has the whole ground to itself, and the 
God established, is not a being who meets the conditions 
of Christianity at all. We get, of course, no proofs out 
of nature that go farther than to prove a God of nature, 
least of all do we get any that show him to be acting 
supernaturally, to restore the disorders of nature. What 
we discover is a God, who institutes, is revealed by, 
and, as many will suspect, 7s the causes of nature. A 
latent pantheism lurks in the argument. Calling the 
God we prove a personal being, and meaning it in good 
faith, we yet find ourselves living before causes, and 
looking for consequences. We only half believe in 
prayer. We expect to be delivered of sin, by a long 
course of duty and self-reformation, that will finally 
pacify the offended laws of nature, and bring them on 
our side again. That God will do any thing for us 
himself, or hold any terms of real society with us, we 
but faintly believe. That used to be the opinion of 
ancient times, but the world, we imagine, is now grow- 
ing more philosophical. The result is that, professing 
Christianity, in the most orthodox manner, we live, in 
natural theology, halfway on the road to pantheism. 
Even the incarnation and the miracles of Jesus drop 
into a virtually dead faith, becoming forms in place of 
living and life-giving realities. 

And the reason is, that our God, derived from nature, 
is a monosyllable only, or at best a mechanical first 
cause, and no such being as the soul wants, or, as Chris- 
tianity supposes, in its doctrines of regenerated life, and 
in all its supernatural machineries. Resting here, there- 
fore, or allowing ourselves to be retained by what we 
eall our natural theology, Christianity dies out on our 
hands, for the want of a Christian God. And, accord- 


THE POSITIVE INSTITUTIONS 491 


ingly, it is a remarkable fact, even of history, that we 
have lost faith in God, just in proportion to the industry 


we have spent in proving his existence, by the natural ' 


evidences. First, because the God we prove does not 
meet our living wants, being only a name for causes, or 
a God of causes ; secondly, because, in turning to Chris- 
tianity for help, we have rather to turn away from the 
God we have proved, than toward him. We may seem 
to have established the fact of God’s existence, but if 
God is gained, Christianity is lost ! 

There is no relief to this mischief, but to conceive, 
at the beginning, that nature is but a fraction of the 
complete system of God, and no integer ; that the true, 
living God, beautifully expressed in a small way in 
nature, is a vastly superior being still, who holds the 
worlds of nature in his hands, and acts upon them as 
the Rectifier, Redeemer, Regenerator, and is even more 
visibly, convincingly, and gloriously expressed in Chris- 
tianity than he is in the worlds. Show him at the head 
of the great kingdom of minds, compassionate to sin, 
conversant with sinners, a hearer of prayer, an illumi- 
nator of experience, a deliverer from the retributions of 
nature, the glorious new-creator of all the most glorious 
characters in the world. Display the self-evidencing 
tokens of his feeling and work, as the God supernatural 
—God in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. 
There is more convincing evidence for God, in the life 
and passion of Jesus, than in all the mechanical adapta- 
tions of the worlds. The God of the Bible and the 
Church, the God that rules the world in the interest of 
Christ and salvation, manifested in the divine beauty, 
and the mighty works and heroic sufferings of his saints 
— this is the God that speaks to our true wants. Pro- 


voke such wants, and let him speak. This kind of: 


492 HOW RELATED TO 


evidence restores the equilibrium of the mere natural 
evidences, makes the God established a person, the true 
living God, and the supernatural facts of Christianity 
are sustained and not discredited by our belief in him. 

It does not appear to be suspected that our modern 
tendencies to pantheism are at all related to our over- 
doing in the matter of natural theology, but it will by 
and by be discovered that we were greatly imposed 
upon by our zeal, and took our ingenuity, in this kind 
of proof-building, for a good deal more than it was 
worth. Never is God conceived to be really personal, 
till he is shown outside of nature, acting upon nature, 
even as we do ourselves. The proofs we seek are 
genuine, only when they correspond, and show us what 
wants to be shown. 


It is also a matter of consequence in our argument, 
as related to the wants of the age, that it provides a 
place for the positive institutions of religion, and pre- 
pares a rational basis for their authority. It is fre- 
quently remarked that, for some reason, these positive 
institutions are falling rapidly into disrespect, as if 
destined finally to be quite lost, or sunk in oblivion. 
Various reasons are assigned for this fact, which amount 
to nothing more definite than that such is the spirit of 
the times. The true reason is the growth and pervad- 
ing influence of naturalism, which not only does not 
want, but excludes such institutions. This doctrine 
assumed, they are theoretically impossible. As the 
word institution itself indicates, they are supernatural 
creations; that is, something set wp on the world of 
nature, not developments out of nature. Besides, it is 
the manner and temper of naturalism, to be impatient 
of any thing, not established in terms of natural reason, 


THE POSITIVE INSTITUTIONS 493 


and spurn it as having no sufficient authority. Accord- 
ingly it will be seen, that, as we grow more naturalistic, 
just in the same proportion do these institutions lose 
their hold of us. What have we to do with the church 
—can we not be as good Christians out of the church 
as in it? What signify the sacraments, even if they 
were distinctly appointed by Christ? they can not save 
us, and we can well enough be saved without them. 
And what is a holy day but a needless restriction, 
when one time ought to be as holy as another? So too 
of the Bible; that, as related to nature, is a positive 
institution. And so again of Christianity itself, which 
began to be instituted in the ancient ritual, and was 
finished, or fully completed, when the higher sense of 
that ritual was displayed, in the terms of the Christian 
salvation. It was set up on the world, by a God who 
is not imprisoned in it, but is acting on it from with- 
out, to rescue it from the action of its disordered 
causalities. What are all these pretended institutions 
of God, but incumbrances and encroachments on our 
liberty? And what necessary use do they serve? 
They are, I answer, what body is to soul. All vital 
or vitalizing powers are organific, and live by means of 
their embodiment. These institutions are the body of 
religious organization, the conditions, in that manner, 
of religious power and perpetuity. Cast away this 
body, and religion is a disembodied ghost only flitting 
across the world, but never resting in it. Truth becomes 
a vagrant. Worship has no time or seat. Preachers 
have no calling or commission. And the no-church, 
no-observance people, come into the world to merely 
wear out and die, without faith, without holy virtue, 
without great sentiments to conserve society, or illu- 
minate the night of their virtual atheism. If we talk 


494 HOW RELATED TO 


of an “ Absolute Religion,” that is going to abide and 
reign without institutions, it will reign as Absolute 
Vacuity. However eloquently preached, for the time, 
and however promising the show it makes, by works of 
reform and social philanthropy, it will be seen to organ- 
ize nothing, and, when once its aim is accomplished in 
the extinction of all that Christianity organizes, it will 
simply cease to work, as all poison does, when the 
subject is dead. 

That Christianity will utterly die, however, for this or 
any other cause, we are not to believe. But the ten- 
dency of our time is one that must be finally arrested, 
by one or the other of these two methods: by restoring 
a distinct and properly intelligent faith in the super- 
natural reign of Christ, such as I have here undertaken 
to set forth, or else by a blind recoil, such as mere vacu- 
ity and the pains of vagrancy will instigate. In the first 
and true method, we shall have the positive institutions, 
holding them in respect, and observing them in practice, 
because we conceive a God who is not waiting for the 
development of nature, but working to regenerate na- 
ture, by what he can erect upon it and do init. But if 
religion gets no body and no organized state, by this 
rational and true method, then it will have them by a 
worse ; for, when we have gone loose for a long time in 
this kind of dissipation, and scattered the body of religion 
as fine dust on the winds, there will finally come a reac- 
tion, a painful want of forms, observances, and organi- 
zations, and a greedy, irrational hurrying back to the 
church that offers such a bountiful supply. The Abso- 
lute Religion that excludes a church will conduct us 
back to the Absolute Church, and there, as disappointed 
victims of one, we shall go in, to be busied and fooled 
by observances and sacraments of the other, losing out 


MATTERS OF SOCIAL REFORM 495 


our intelligence, and even God’s light itself, under an im- 
mense overgrowth of institutions which he did not ap- 
point, and which have really no agreement with his truth. 


The conception we have raised of Christianity, as a 
regenerative work and institution of God, separates it, by 
a wide chasm, from any mere scheme of philanthropy or 
social reform. As to reforms that begin at the outside, 
and stop at the rectification of the outward conduct, 
they may be beneficial or they may not. There is a de- 
gree of vice, and consequent misery, that, for the time, 
incapacitates the subject for the reception of truth and 
the Christian influences. There are also external wrongs 
and disorders of sin, that only represent to men the in- 
ward state of their hearts ; holding up the glass in which 
they may see themselves ; and it is no genuine interest 


of Christianity to get these smoothed away. It is even — 


a great part of God’s wisdom, in casting the plan of our 
life, that he has set us in conditions to bring out the evil 
that isin us. For it is by this medley, that we make, 
of wrongs, fears, pains of the mind, and pains of the 
body, all the woes of all shapes and sizes that follow at 
the heels of our sin — by these it is that he dislodges our 
perversity, and draws us to himself. If, therefore, by a 
grand comprehensive sweep of reform, we could get all 
the misdoings, that we call sins, out of sight, and the sin 
of the spirit, as a state separated from the consciousness 
of God, shut in, so as nowhere to appear, it would be 
the greatest imaginable misfortune. We should have a 
race acting paradisaically in their behavior, when they 
have no principle of good in their life. It is very true 
that no mere reform is likely to reach this point; for it 
is very certain that men will do sins enough, or have 
vices enough to represent and shame their sin. And yet 


_ 


496 HOW RELATED TO 


the merely naturalistic reformers go to just this task ; 
the task, that is, of an external purgation of the world. 
This is their religion, and they take on often such airs, 
in what they imagine to be the superior philanthropy, 
or the superior fidelity and boldness of their course, 
that they seem even to be holding out a challenge 
to Christianity to come and try, if it can do as much 
as they! Are they not going to take care of the 
progress of society? Are they not also going finally 
to get all the evils of life away? Christianity under- 
takes no such thing — unless by undertaking more. It 
goes only a certain way in the matter of reforms; viz., 
far enough to show its true interest in every thing hu- 
man, and especially far enough to get those vices and 
sins in hospital, which, as they continue to rage, take 
away self-possession, abate the force of reason, and dis- 
qualify the subject for the gospel. But it has a quiet 
perception of the folly and absurdity of any plan, which 
expects to smooth up the world in its sin, or its aliena- 
tion from God. Back of sins, it recognizes sin; back of 
the acts, a state which they express and represent. This 
it regenerates; and so, working outward from the in- 
most center, it proposes to reform every thing. 

Great reforms are certainly wanted. No Christian 
therefore will dishonor the faith of a supernatural remedy 
in Christ, by taking refuge behind it, and avoiding, in 
that manner, his responsibilities — how is he going to re- 
generate all the sin of the world, when he dare not speak 
of the sins? On the other hand, he will not be intimi- 
dated by the outcry of the reformers that upbraid his 
Christian slowness, or beguiled by their pretentious airs, 
when they make it a religion, or even a more superlative 
religion, to be doing such prodigious things for society. 
Their appeal is to public opinion, not to God. They 


THE MANNER OF PREACHING 497 


make their own gospel as they go, and have undertaken, 
themselves, to do such things for the world, that men 
will say, ‘‘ behold Christianity was a failure!” The force 
too by which they operate is in their will, and this strikes 
fire into the nitrous element of their passions, the moment 
they encounter resistance. They grow hot and violent. 
Denunciation becomes their element, and, as numbers 
are added, they run to a genuine fanaticism. No Chris- 
tian has any place on this level. As far as he under- 
takes to co-operate in reforms, he must do it as one who 
stays above with Christ, and works with him; retaining 
his passions, by not loosing his will; mixing his reproofs 
with his prayers, and moderating his ambition by rest- 
ing his cause in the mighty power of God. 


To admit, in its full force, the reality of our Christian 
or supernatural relations to God, wouldalso very certainly 
result in a more apostolic manner of preaching. For 
preaching deals appropriately in the supernatural, pub- 
lishing to guilty souls what has come into the world from 
above the world — Christ and his salvation. We ask, how 
often, with real sadness, whence the remarkable impo- 
tence of preaching in our time? It is because we concoct 
our gospels too much in the laboratories of our under- 
standing; because we preach too many disquisitions, 
and look for effects correspondent only with the natural 
forces exerted. True preaching is a testimony ; it offers, / 
not things reasoned, in any principal degree, but things 
given, supernatural things, testifying them as being in 
their power, by an utterance which they fill and inspire. 
It brings new premises, which, of course, no argument 
ean create, and, therefore, speaks to faith. And, what 
is most of all peculiar, it assumes the fact, in men, of a 
religious nature, higher than a merely thinking nature, 


498 HOW RELATED TO 


which, if it can be duly awakened, cleaves to Christ and 
his salvation with an almost irresistible affinity. This 
religious nature is a capacity for the supernatural ; that 
is, for the divinely supernatural; in other words, it is 
that quality by which we become inspirable creatures, 
permeable by God’s life, as a crystal by the light, per- 
meable in a sense that no other creature is. Indeed, 
the great problem of the gospel is, in one view, to inspire 
us again, at a point where we are uninspired; to per- 
meate us again by the divine nature, and make us con- 
scious again of God. In this view, it assumes to speak 
as to a want, and what a want it is, that a capacity even 
for God, in the soul, stands empty ! And hence it is that 
so many infidels have been converted under preaching, 
that went directly by their doubts, only bringing up the 
mighty themes of God and salvation, and throwing them 
in as torches into the dark, blank cavern of their empty 
heart. They are not put upon their reason, but the 
burning glow of their inborn affinities for the divine are 
kindled, and the blaze of these overtops their specula- 
tions, and scorches them down by its glare. Doubtless 
there are times and occasions where something may be 
gained by raising a trial before the understanding. But 
there may also be something lost, even in cases where 
that kind of issue is fairly gained. Many a time noth- 
ing is wanting, but to speak as to a soul already hungry 
and thirsty; or, if not consciously so, ready to hunger 
and thirst, as soon as the bread and water of life are 
presented. If the problem is to get souls under sin 
inspired again, which it certainly is, then it is required 
that the preacher shall drop lecturing on religion and 
preach it ; testify it, prophesy it, speak to faith as being 
in faith, bring inspiration as being inspired, and so be- 
come the yehicle, in his own person, of the power he 


INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY 499 


will communicate ; that he may truly beget in the gos- 
pel such as will be saved by it. No man is a preacher, 
because he has something like or about a gospel, in his 
head. He really preaches only when his person is the 
living embodiment, the inspired organ, of the gospel ; 
in that manner no mere human power, but the demon- 
stration of a Christly and ,divine power. It is in this 
manner that preaching has had, in former times, effects 
so remarkable. At present, we are almost all under the 
power, more or less, of the age in which we live. In- 
fected with naturalism ourselves and having hearers 
that are so, we can hardly find what account to make of 
our barrenness. 


It is also a matter of consequence to be anticipated 
in a just and full establishment of supernatural verities, 
that intellectual and moral philosophy are destined, in 
this way, to be finally Christianized; and so that all 
science will, at last, be melted into unity with the re- 
ligion of Christ. Our professors of philosophy leave it 
_to the theologians to settle the question whether man is 
a sinner or not, and go on to assume that he is in the 
normal state of his being, acting precisely according to 
his nature ; when, if the theologians chance to doubt 
any of their conclusions, the reply is that they do. not 
understand philosophy. 

Now it is either true that man is a sinner, or it is 
not. If he is not a sinner, then he exists normally, and 
what he is in his action, he is in his nature, and a great 
many questions will be settled accordingly. On the 
other hand, if he is a sinner, acting against God, acting 
as he was not made to act, then he is, by the supposition, 
a disordered nature, a being in the state of unnature. 
Any philosophy therefore which does not recognize the 


~ 


500 HOW RELATED TO 


fact, but deduces his nature from his present demonstra- 
tions, must be wholly at fault. 

And how different any philosophy of man must be, 
which ignores the fact of sin, from one that does not, 
may be easily seen. Let the subject be the relation of 
our powers and capacities to our ideals. One who makes 
no account of sin will say, develop the capacities and 
you have the ideals —he will even infer the capacities 
from the ideals. «But to one who duly recognizes sin, 
there is nothing so sad, as the fact that the mind flowers 
into ideals that it can not reach, conceiving a beauty,a 
perfectly crystalline order, when it can as little drag 
itself into this beauty, this crystalline order, as it could 
a shattered firmament. 

Or, let the subject be, what is the nature of virtue, or 
more particularly, whether self-love is the determining 
motive in all virtue? Taking it for granted that what 
men do they are made to do, and finding that the com- 
mon world of men are actuated by self-love in their 
virtue, the inference is that such is the manner of all 
virtue ; it is what men do for fear, for gain, or for some 
matter of mere self-interest ; in which virtue and vice 
are exactly alike. But one who recognizes the fact of 
sin, immediately suspects that the self-love power enters 
into men’s virtue, thus largely, because they are sinners. 
In the highest, the truly divine virtue, he looks for a 
spontaneous or inspired movement, where the good is 
followed because it is good, the right because it is right, 
God because he is God. And the conclusion is that 
what the other calls virtue is only a form of sin. 

Or again, the question may be, what is the perfect 
state of man? Ignoring the fact of sin, the conclusion 
will be that he is perfected, in squaring himself by the 
rules of virtue ; he is consummated, that is, in the mat- 


INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY 501. 


ter of ethics. But where sin is taken into account, it 
will be recollected that men, as commonly observed, 
are out of place and out of the true line of experience ; 
that they have departed from God, and that their prop- 
erly religious nature is detained by sin, or closed up. 
To be completely filled with God, and perfected in the 
eternal movement of God, in a word, to be conscious of 
God, and dwell in the divine impulse, or inspiration — 
’ that is the perfect state. He has found, in other words, 
that man is just what he most entirely omitted to be, or 
perhaps never once thought of in his fallen life, an . 
inspirable creature, having, in that fact, the real sum- 
mit, the grandeur, and glory of his being. He culmi- 
nates in God, not in any rules of ethics. His goodness 
is not the perfect drill he submits to, and tries to observe, 
but it is the freedom of a spontaneous, inspired, and 
truly divine beauty. 

How different a thing must it be to philosophize about 
a substance that acts according to its nature, and about 
one that acts in contradiction both of its nature and its 
God! Doubtless the latter is a much higher form of 
being than the other; for it can not be a thing, it can 
be nothing less than a power, glorious and transcendent ; 
and therefore it is that man, contemplated at just this 
point of sin, rises to a pitch of tragic sublimity and 
grandeur, asnowhereelse. Why thenshould our philos- 
ophy refuse to look at him, just where his real stature is 
revealed ? When this fact of sin is referred back to the- 
ologians, and declared, either with or without a sneer, to 
be in their province, a much greater compliment is paid 
them than is commonly thought. It is giving them up 
all that belongs to man’s real greatness, and claiming 
the husk that is left. 

This separation of intellectual and moral philosophy 


. 502 HOW RELATED TO 


from the great religious problem of our existence, the 
fact of sin, and the want of salvation, is the more re- 
markable, that it is a descent from the more dignified and 
nobler conceptions of the ancient heathen masters. It is 
unnatural, and even unintelligent. How can philoso- 
phy, dealing with a supernatural subject, stand off from 
the facts of his supernatural history ? Endeavyoring to 
stay by nature, and magnify the natural history, it only 
takes a brick for Babylon, and gives a science of the 
brick. There is to be a speedy revision of this false 
method. No real philosopher can long ignore the super- 
natural. Religion then takes hold of philosophy and 
sets it to the study of her problems. All natural science 
will follow, setting itself in affinity with things super- 
natural. The philosophies are then baptized, in being 
simply inducted into a just conception of the one system 
of God. Now the young minds trained in such studies 
are not led away, but led directly up to Christ and the 
glorious truth of his mission. That mission is become 
the pole star of learning, and how great the change that 
must follow ! 


Once more it appears to be an important consequence 
of the argument we have instituted, that, in assigning 
the supernatural a definite place, and a firm, intellectual 
ground, it contributes a valuable aid to Christian expe- 
rience. There is a feeling widely prevalent that when 
we talk of faith, we are covering up the want of intelli- 
gence; that when we speak of the supernatural, we mean 
something ghostly, supplied by the imagination, and 
verified only by our superstitions ; that when we name 
the matter of religious experience, we suppose a drivel- 
ing, and, as it were, forced submission of the soul, to 
what a rational philosophy must of course reject. All 


CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 503 


such impressions will, I trust, be removed, as unworthy 
and really unjust, by the argument I have now presented. 

It finds a place for the supernatural in the scheme of 
existence itself; showing that we ourselves are super- 
natural agents as really, only not in the same degree of 
power, as Christ in his miracles. It gets a footing, in 
this manner, for supernatural facts and agencies, among 
the known realities. More than this, it shows that 
nature is not, by itself, any complete whole or real uni- 
verse, but is in fact only a scaffolding, the smallest, 
humblest part of the intellectual whole, or system of 
God’s empire; while, on the other hand, the supernat- 
ural side of his plan, concerned with free intelligences, 
their government and redemption, and the building of 
them into a temple of eternal Love and Beauty round 
himself, comprises all the real and last ends of his throne. 

Every thing is thus made ready for the best advances 
in religious experience. For there is a close relation, 
scarcely different from identity, between faith and what 
is called experience ; and both are terms that have a 
fixed reference to the fact that Christ and Christianity 
are supernatural bestowments. If they could be rea- 
soned out of premises already in the mind, they would 
not require faith. But Christ comes into the world 
from without, to bestow himself by a presentation. 
He is a new premise that could not be reasoned, but 
must first be, and then can be received only by faith. 
When he is so received, or appropriated, he is, of course, 
experienced or known by experiment; in that manner 
verified — he that believeth hath the witness in him- 
self. The manner, therefore, of this divine experience, 
called faith, is strictly Baconian. And the result is an 
experimental knowledge of God, or an experimental 
acquaintance with God, in the reception of his supernat- 


504 HOW RELATED TO 


ural communications. Which knowledge, again, or 
acquaintance, is, in fact, a revelation within, a divine 
manifestation, a restored consciousness of God; or 
we may call it peace, joy, strength, a growth into the 
divine purity —it is any and all these together. And 
it should not be strange that, in such a participation of 
God, we are lifted, empowered, assimilated, or finally 
glorified. 

It will be admitted that what is properly called 
religious experience runs low in our time. Even the 
phrase itself is carefully eschewed, by many, as a term 
of cant, that lacks, or is suspected of lacking, any basis 
of intelligence. We learn to be familiar with the 
phrase “ philosophic consciousness,” and speak with sat- 
isfaction of “ cultivating the philosophic consciousness,” 
but religious experience belongs to a lower class of 
people, who can not ascend .to so high a matter. One 
pertains to a rational culture, the other is a relic of 
pietism now gone by with all but the feebler minds. 
No fact presents the intellectual habit of our time in a 
more pitiable light. To get experience of ourselves, or 
a practical consciousness of our own little subjectivity, we 
account to be something of importance ; but to recover, 
unfold, grow into, and become ennobled by the con- 
sciousness of God, united to him as the all-sufficient 
object and fullness of our life — this, we think, is some- 
thing related to weakness! And to this folly we are 
shrunk by the wretched conceit of our naturalism. 
‘ What if it should happen to be true that we are 
all inherently related to God, having our summits 
of thought, power, quality, greatness in him, made to be 
conscious of him as of ourselves, and in that nobler 
consciousness to live? What if this too showl4 happen 
to be the truth waiting our embrace, at the point ot lit 


CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 505 


tleness and mere self-consciousness sharpened by our 
sin? How sorry the picture we make, when we figure 
it in this manner, as the superlative wisdom, to have 
a cultivated power of self-reflection, and only another 
name for weakness to speak of religious experience ! 
If I amright in the matter of my argument, a very dif- 
ferent impression is justified. Mere naturalism it 
shows, in fact, to be a fraud against nature. It soundly 
authenticates the grand supernatural verities of the 
gospel and of Christian experience, showing that, with- 
out them, there is no rational unity, even in what we 
call the universe. 

The utmost confidence may now be felt, in all the ex- 
pectations and exploits of faith ; in prayer, in divine 
guidance, in the cares of a supernatural Providence, in 
all the heavenly gifts. Clear of all reserve the disciple 
may go to his calling, as one detained by no misgivings, 
or lurking suspicions. And his success will be accord- 
ing to his confidence. Weakened by no foolish sus- 
picion of being at fault, intellectually, he will go on 
manfully and boldly, instructed always by his ex- 
perience, and advancing always upon it; removing 
greater mountains, as he gets more faith ; and giving 
all men to see, who chance to observe him, what power 
and luster there is in a life thus hid with Christ in God. 
Verily, such it is that we want as the preachers and 
pastors and saints of our time; men, whose strength 
is the joy of the Lord; men who dwell in the secret 
place of the Most High; men who walk in glorious 
liberty, living no more to themselves, but to Christ who 
bought them ; preaching Christ by their example, their 
prayers, their prophesyings, and witnessing by the 
blessed fruits of their faith, to its ennobling verity and 
greatness. 


506 HOW RELATED TO 


The argument we have traced prepares also a yet far- 
ther contribution to Christian experience, in bringing 
more distinctly forward, the question of a possible dis- 
covery and statement of the laws of the supernatural. 
How great a change has been wrought, in the creative 
and productive processes of human industry, by a scien- 
tific discovery of the laws of nature. The address we 
make to nature,and the forces of nature,is now intel- 
ligent, and our productive powers are as much greater, 
as the forces we harness are stronger and more obedient. 
The world itself is quite another world, displaying new 
and vastly higher possibilities. What now is wanted, in 
the domain of Christian experience, is a similar develop- 
ment of the laws of the supernatural ; when a corre- 
spondent change will be observed in the productive 
forces and the progressive conquests of the spiritual life. 
When these laws are once developed, the men of the 
kingdom will see it,as never before, to be a kingdom, 
and will know exactly by what process to be advanced 
and established init. It will be as when alchemy gave 
way to chemistry, astrology to astronomic computations, 
the divining rod and other saws and superstitions of 
mining to the intelligent prospecting of geologic science, 
agriculture in the times of the moon to agriculture in 
the terms of experimental and scientific guidance. Not 
that any science of supernatural things, or things of 
religious experience, is possible to be created, that shall 
prove itself in the same manner, to the mere natural 
judgment or intellect. It must be a science, if we use 
that term, that pertains to the higher realm of the Spirit. 
It must, therefore, stand in terms of analogy and figure, 
which can fully unfold their meaning only to minds 
enlightened, in a degree, by holy experience. It must 
be a contribution to faith, of the laws by which it may 


CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 507 


address itself to the supernatural forces of grace, and 
the manifestations of God. In the initial points of 
faith, it must approve itself to the mere intelligence; on 
points farther on, it must approve itself, more and more, 
to spiritual insight, in its advanced stages. Hitherto 
there has been a large mixture of superstition in religious 
experience. Proposing to get on by application, it has 
yet trusted more to heat than to light. It has looked 
for visions and revelations without law. It has been 
a kind of spiritual alchemy, taken by wonderful sur- 
prises, and blown up as often by fanatical explosions. 
The progress it has made has been fantastic, and it has 
finally reached the abiding place of order and sobriety, 
only by a long course of eccentricities and blindfold ex- 
periments. There has even been a kind of impression 
that God himself is irregular, and, in some good sense, 
capricious in his supernatural gifts, therefore to be 
reached by no certain method, but only by a sort of 
adventure, that will some time chance to find him. 
How different the fortunes of religious experience, 
when it is regarded— which, in some future time, it 
will be —as a coming unto God by the laws that regu- 
late his bestowments ; when the world of his supernat- 
ural kingdom is conceived to be as truly under laws, 
as the world of nature, and these laws, accurately dis- 
tinguished, enable the disciple to address himself accu- 
rately to the powers of grace, as now to the forces of 
nature. 

Our argument favors such an expectation. It brings 
the supernatural into the grand, fore-ordinated circle 
of existence, and makes it even a central part of that 
stupendous whole, or integer, which we call the uni- 
verse. It also conceives that God works by laws in the 
supernatural, in the incarnation and the miracles of 


508 HOW RELATED TO 


Jesus, in his sacrifice and death, in the mission of the 
Spirit and all spiritual gifts. Indeed, there is no being 
but a bad one, a sinner, that is not punctually and ex- 
actly determined by some law. Not even the atoms of 
a crystal are more exactly set by law, than the thoughts 
and choices of a perfect mind. And though it be not any 
law of physical necessity, such as we discover in the cau- 
salities of nature, it is none the less a law of unalterable 
and undeviating control. In God himself it is the law 
by which, as presiding over the thoughts, the ends, and 
the determinations of his perfect mind, the laws of na- 
ture were themselves conceived and appointed — the 
higher law of his goodness and his moral reason. 
Neither let it be imagined that this higher tier of law, 
which governs God, in his supernatural dispensations, 
is to us inaccessible or undiscernible. As the fall of an 
apple showed to Newton’s eye the law that presides over 
the remotest worlds of the physical universe, so we shall 
find, not seldom, in the most familiar principles of duty 
and sentiments of religion, things in ourselves, that in- 
fallibly interpret him. A large inference may be also de- 
rived from the admitted fact of his perfection; for, while 
nothing definite or certain can be predicated of imperfec- 
tion, in a subject unknown as regards its law, the exact, 
ideal perfection of God, like that of the astronomic or- 
der, suffers a large and free deduction respecting all his 
tempers, ends, and methods. Much also may be gath- 
ered from the general economy of the supernatural, as 
displayed in the work and counsel of human redemp- 
tion. Much is given by express revelation ; for, though 
it is not common to regard, as definite and fixed laws of 
divine action, or bestowment, the familiar rules by which 
our approach to God is regulated in the scripture, they 
do yet suppose that he is regulated himself by terms 


CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 509 


correspondent. The rule —to him that hath shall be 
given —first be reconciled to thy brother—if two of 
you shall agree as touching any thing —if our heart 
condemn us not—if a man hate his brother—as we 
forgive them that trespass against us—if ye keep my 
commandment—if ye search for me with all the heart 
— all these conditions of prayer, and terms of approach 
to God, are, in a yet higher view, laws of the Spirit, 
supposing that God’s gifts themselves are dispensable 
only in terms that correspond. And besides all these, 
a large discovery also can be made of things supernat- 
ural and their laws, by our own experience; for, as he 
that loveth, knoweth God, so the whole life of faith is 
an experience and spiritual discovery of God. And no 
discovery of natural science is more valid. Nor is there 
any thing in which a ripe Christian can do more for ex- 
perimental religion, than in giving to the help of such 
as will seek after God, a treatise drawn from all these 
sources, on the laws of God’s supernatural kingdom — 
the kingdom of grace and salvation. No other contri- 
bution to the truth of Christ is so much needed, or 
promises results of so great moment. First, that which 
is natural, afterward that which is spiritual. It was 
necessary to this higher kind of progress, that the dis- 
coveries of natural science should precede, and raise the 
expectation of laws here also to be verified. And when 
it is done, as it will not be in any brief space of time, 
the world may begin to think of a general consumma- 
tion at hand. Faith will now grow solid, and overtop 
the temples of reason with its grandeur. Religious ex- 
perience, conceived and proved to be the revelation of 
God, will become a general embodiment of the divine 
in human history, fulfilling the idea of the incarnation, 
never till then completely intelligible. There will be 


510 HOW RELATED TO EXPERIENCE 


order without constraint, and liberty without fanati- 
cism. The desultory will give place to the regular, and 
a kind of holy skill will distinguish all the approaches 
of men to God, and all the works they do in his name. 
The power of Christian piety will be as much greater 
than now, as it knows how to connect more certainly, 
and more in the manner of science, with the resources 
of God. 

Until then the highest and even truest principles of 
Christian experience are likely to involve some danger 
of fanaticism. I can not be sure that persons will not 
appear who, professing to lay hold of points advanced in 
this treatise, use them fanatically, as the fuel of their 
strange fire. Fanaticism can certainly find a shelter 
under it, and gather out of it many pretexts for extray- 
agance and delusion ; even as it has done in all ages, 
out of Christianity itself; but I cherish a degree of con- 
fidence that what I have advanced will be a contribu- 
tion rather to the intelligence, than to the delusions, of 
the Christian world. It has been my endeavor to put 
honor on faith —to restore, if possible, the genuine, 
apostolic faith. I have even wished, shall I dare to 
say, hoped, that I might do something to inaugurate 
that faith in the field of modern science, and claim for 
it there that respect to which, in the sublimity of its 
reasons, it is entitled. And great will be the day when 
faith, laying hold of science and rising into intellectual 
majesty with it, is acknowledged in the glorious sister- 
hood of a common purpose, and both lead in the realms 
they occupy, reconciled to God, cleared of the disorders 
and woes of sin, to set them in that final unity which 
represents the eternal Headship of Christ. 








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